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David Wen
Entrepreneur, software developer, management consultant. He always does an extra pushup for his friend Andrew.
Origins of the chinese revolution book
Origins of the Chinese Revolution

The original French edition of this book, published in 1967, was widely acclaimed as the best introduction to Chinese Communism ever published. A fresh, bold interpretative survey, it focuses on the dynamic social forces underlying the Chinese Communists' rise in three short decades from obscurity to power.

The author seeks above all to relate the events of this tumultuous period to certain tentative generalizations about the nature and course of the revolution. He is concerned less with the May Fourth Movement as such, for example, than with the revolution's intellectual origins, less with the Communist party's early political history than with the place of Marxist ideology in that history, less with the military aspects of the war of 1937-45 than with the influence of nationalism in the growing success of the Communists.

An important part of the book deals with the various governmental and non-governmental attempt at reform during the Kuomintang era, which the author shows were too little too late to dam the swelling flood of revolution. The conclusion evaluates the crucial role of imperialism, the peasantry, and the army in the Chinese "formula" for revolution and re-examines the relationship between Marxism and the Chinese Revolution.

Source: Amazon
Not reviewed by David Wen.

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David wen avatar
David Wen
Entrepreneur, software developer, management consultant. He was once addicted to Minesweepers (61 seconds on expert)