Review

A masterful job of lifting the veil on the political struggles over agricultural policy during and immediately after the Cultural Revolution... Zweig's book is the definitive work on the subject.

--Dwight H. Perkins (Harvard University )

The study is in many ways unique and it promises to be a landmark volume... It is likely to stand as the most comprehensive analysis of the rural development strategy of the Chinese Communist Party in the crucial period of the Cultural Revolution and its immediate aftermath

--Nicholas R. Lardy (University of Washington )

A fine study, characterized by extraordinarily detailed research. It raises our understanding of China's rural politics to a new level.

--Thomas P. Bernstein (Columbia University )

The collectivization and subsequent decollectivization of rural China represent two of the most far-reaching social experiments of the twentieth century. Zweig's masterful survey of this experience should be of great interest not merely to Sinologists, but also to social theorists and development specialists around the world, and not least of all to Mikhail Gorbachev.

--Robert D. Putnam (Harvard University )