What are some good books about the history of modern China? I'm reading pic rel, 60% in I'm disappointed at its contents. It doesn't really explain how Commies took over China, only that they had a string of defeats in the early 30s. I hoped for something closer to the "wages of destruction" by Tooze since that provided hard numbers which explained the defeat of Germany rather well.
>>25362577From commune to capitalism : how China's peasants lost collective farming and gained urban poverty by Zhun Xufor earlier stuffMao : A Reinterpretation by Lee Feigondespite having an oriental sounding name Lee Feigon is a Brit, Welsh I think.I think the Fanshen Hinton books are well regard.Dikotter and June Chang are a joke, Western Scholarship on China is HOT HOT GARBAGEAdam Tooze being an exception
>>25362577>>25362822Dikotter is great and you guys are pseuds.
>>25362945you are circumcised
>>25363260NTA but I'm not so you can suck my smegma
>>25362822>Western Scholarship on China is HOT HOT GARBAGECope and seethe
>>25362822>Adam Tooze being an exceptionThe fag who worshipped his grandpa that recruited spies for the Soviets at universities in the West? Gee, I wonder why you don't want us to read Dikkoter suggest we focus on non-Western scholarship (i.e. shit written under the guidance of the CCP).
>>25362945How is Rana Mitter or Johnathan Spence?
>>25362577Dikotter is a bad writer. He's extremely anti-communist which isn't a bad thing itself but it completely destroys his ability to write about them with any level of sympathy or nuance. Everything is framed in pure negative light, the CCP can never do right, they can only fail upward accidentally occasionally in between their massive failures.
>>25363315What?
>>25363307>Rana Mitter"Japan bad.">Johnathan Spence"They'll liberalize eventually."
>>25363327I haven't read that one. I read his books on the Great Famine and on the Cultural Revolution
>>25363344Mao was a disaster for China, anon.
>>25363285sorry but foreskin regeneration medicine is not covered under goyslave medical insurance
>>25362577Commies took over because landlords thought they could beat them with might. Turns out communists have might too sometimes. Chinese neo nazis forgot that being racist doesn't make you stronger, you actually have to have incentives to pay rent.
>>25362577
>>25363399I'm aware but it's not just shitting on Mao
>>25363331>WW2 Japan actions in China, BAD!!Yes, contrarian. Slaughtering women, children and the elderly for fun is BAD.
>>25363331
>>25362577pic rel is one of the best books i've ever read, essential reading to understand land reform
>>25363331You weebs sure are all for sucking Japanese cock in any manner conceivably possible, huh? You've been willfully mentally colonized, lmao.
Mao's China and After by Maurice MeisnerRed Star Over China by Edgar SnowChen Village Under Mao and Deng + Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization by Anita Chan + othersDeng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by Ezra Vogel
>>25363616Ain't got any proof, huh?
>>25363331I find Rana Mitter's name funny because I had an ex-girlfriend named Rana too. she was an alcoholic, which is like kryptonite to Asian people.
>>25363560Spook
>>25363696Woag, this dude thinks bayoneting infants is... le based!?
>>25363585but enough about Third worldist shills on the hard right
>>25363287Yes
>>25362577Maurice Meisner. Review of it:>550 pages of incredibly well-written, exhaustively researched, and colorful history of 20th-century China, from the beginnings of the revolutionary communist movement in the 1920s amidst the ashes of the 1911 Revolution, through the utopian chaos of the post-revolution era, to the capitalist thawing of the '80s and '90s. Undoubtedly the single best book on Chinese history and Chinese communism I've read. Dense with information but simultaneously easy and pleasant to read. The narrative flows splendidly and smoothly.>Probably my favorite thing about this book is how well it unpacks the inner workings and debates of the Communist Party of China. Like anybody the author has his biases, but he does a fantastic job of getting into why different leaders and factions of the Party pursued the policies and ideas that they did, why disasters like the Great Leap Forward famines happened, etc. in a way that really makes you appreciate the underlying logic and context. He doesn't shy away from judgement or even condemnation, but never without analyzing matters on its own terms.>Its funny because I came away especially from the middle sections about the radical Maoist period with much more sympathy for the "right-wing" layers, who often seem to be pretty mundane bureaucrat types who just really wanted to stabilize a normal country after a century of death and destruction, and each time things finally seem to be settling down Mao barges in and flips the table and agitates another few years of chaos and revolutionary fervor, all of which usually leads to nothing really changing anyways. But again, the author always puts this into context; Mao wasn't insane, he and millions of other intelligent, dedicated Chinese communists were genuinely and deeply concerned with questions of social egalitarianism, the dangers of foreign intervention, rapid economic growth, etc.
>>25362577No joke, I was on a flight to Buenos Aires today and the guy seated next to me stroke up a conversation.We said he was an engineer that had been to Beijing, Shenzhen and Weizhen on separate occasions.When I asked him if he found China oppressive he said something to the effect of >well yeah, because of the communism and stuffI knew it was pointless to tell someone this uninformed that China stopped being communist after the Xiaoping reforms, what's depressing is that this is the pretty much the common view amongst normalfags
>>25363890What even is oppression anyways according to your metric?
>>25363477that's ok I can just graft mine back on by taking flesh from jewish cartilage
>>25364122you'll just cut it off if Frank Dick-cutter tells you to, just to own the communists
>>25363546It's the 20th century history of China told largely from the perspective of Mao, anon. This is entirely fair given the state was totalitarian and he was its dictator. What you're doing is basically the same as complaining that Cambodia isn't celebrated in a book titled "Pol Pot's Genocide".
>>25363721>>25363561
>>25364381Rewi Alley is an Anglo New Zealander and joined before 1933, American Lebanese Ma Hai-de (Shafick George Hatem) Joined the communists in 1936, Canadian Norman Bethune died while helping the communist in 1939, in the 40s Americans Erwin Engst and Joan Hinton went to China and got married and had children including Fred Engst who still lives in China
>>25363560Yeah, the CCP shouldn't have done it.
>>25362945His trilogy about Mao was pretty good but this book missed the mark completely and sometimes reuses passages from his previous work
>>25362577>It doesn't really explain how Commies took over ChinaWhen the Chinese civil war began the Nationalists were beating the Communists hands down.Then the United States government ordered the Chinese nationalists to bring the communists into a coalition government.When the Nationalists refused the United States government stopped providing arms and ammunition to the Nationalists.As most of their rifles, ammunition and artillery shells were imported from the USA this meant the Nationalists rapidly started to run out of equipment.Meanwhile as proved by the Russian archives in the 1990s the communists were supplied with everything they needed from Stalin including food and air support.The result was the Nationalists began to lose as you can't fight a war with no guns and ammunition.The communists then emerged victorious and the nationalists retreated to Taiwan.It's covered in the book America's Retreat from Victory tl;drCommunist China was created by the United States government
>>25364560u left out that the ccp and kmt formed the second united front to resist the japanese invasion during ww2.
>>25364560That's not really an adequate argument, majority of the book consist of Dikötter hammering the point that communists were despised by peasants, workers and capitalists alike. Despite this fact they're able to arm motivated guerilla fighters and eventually a standing army which according to him conduct "human wave attacks" which take immense motivation. They do these things because according to him they're shoddily armed and led, however they're also supplied by soviet union with superior equipment. So the book is literally full of contradictions that are never addressed
I will take excuse I have to post confusing book covers
>>25364581>That's not really an adequate argument, majority of the book consist of Dikötter hammering the point that communists were despised by peasants, workers and capitalists alike.No it wasn't.
>>25364626Yeah, that's what I said
>>25364634>majority of the book consist of Dikötter hammering the point that communists were despised by peasants, workers and capitalists alike.Incorrect.
>>25363890>I knew it was pointless to tell someone this uninformed that China stopped being communist after the Xiaoping reforms, what's depressing is that this is the pretty much the common view amongst normalfagsIt's a bit weird because they opened markets wide while they kept the structure of the political system, and under Xi have tried ways (as far as I can tell) to reinforce it. There's communist propaganda that looks like it's from out of the Stalin era:https://youtu.be/szjxpbGhjTMIt's like a communist state acting as a manager of capitalism. In any event, censorship is something I've heard people complain about. People will say, oh, there are taboo subjects in the West too, and that's true, but it's stricter in China than the vast majority of countries. You get a sense of what you can/can't talk about by asking DeepSeek questions. The party also stifles any movement on the ground. Also there's a kind of funny but Orwellian thing where it's really that you shouldn't talk about the sensitive subjects but nobody will explain what those are kek (it's a state secret).Also this is a fact but everything you read about Xi on the Chinese internet comes from either official or registered sources. For individuals you need to talk about him in a cryptic way to get around being censored. Even if you want to say positive things they'll censor you. So anyways, I think when people say things like China is oppressive "because of communism and stuff," that kind of stuff is what they're often referring to.
>>25364640You should try reading the thing
>>25364647I did but unlike you I don't get assmad because a historian doesn't champion my ideological bias. The majority of the book isn't "hammering the point" that the commies were disliked by everyone and there aren't any "contradictions" about "human waves" because it very clearly lays out how civilians were pressed into both sides of the conflict. Your take that he's contradicting himself it just plain idiotic.
>>25363890>DURRR, ACKTULLY EVERYTHING BAD IS BECAUSE THEY ARENT ACKTULLY COMMUNISTYou're an idiot but good on you for having the sense to not force that retarded sperg onto someone forced to be sitting near you.
>>25364363Yeah and then ill graft it on to your lips after I ejaculated
>>25364413>What you're doing is basically the same as complaining that Cambodia isn't celebrated in a book titled "Pol Pot's Genocide".Don't give me ideas
>>25364667You're incapable of coming up with your own so someone has to.
>>25364672Ha.No.
>>25364682Also nta.
>>25364657Well I don't know what to tell you, if you read the thing but can't spot the inherit contradictions in his thesis of communist victory and the paradoxical characterisation of communists being weak and strong in certain aspects in the same time then you should pay more attention
>>25364709>communist victory and the paradoxical characterisation of communists being weak and strong in certain aspects in the same timeThere aren't any "paradoxical characterizations". Your reading is retardedly reductive.
>>25364682>n-n-noLol.
>>25364709And yes, he constantly contradicts himself throughout the book, it's rather painful to read. Moreover his writing is extremely coloured by an ideological bias towards Chinese communist party or by sheer incompetence when it comes to certain topics like military matters. Him referring to local numerical superiority as a "human wave" just paints tactical prowess in a purely negative light
>>25363912The social credit system and omnipresent surveillance and censorship.
>>25364722>HE'S BIASED NO ME!Lol, no.
Communists and communist sympathizers are retarded ideologues so there's not really any point in trying to converse with them. The funniest thing is that if "their" side won, it already lost but if it somehow came back and won, fags like them would either be up against a wall or selling their bussies for bread within 8 months.
>>25364730Yeah pretty much, he takes KMT memories about the war at face value which means he repeats same talking points other historians did about Wehrmacht performance against the red army. I don't blame him for it but it's rather droll. There are other things to nitpick about, he talks big about the impact of communists seizing Japanese armories but never really puts the size of loot into a context. How big of an impact would those 20 thousand rifles make when there are millions of soldiers fighting with bayonets? He certainly doesn't tell us.
>>25364748No, he doesn't. You're mad he doesn't suck tiny yellow dick and glorify the CCP. Simple as.
>>25364725I mean, doesn't that go without saying?
>>25364720El oh El. I'm gonna make you munch on African baby foreskins the rest of your life.
>>25364794I don't really see a difference between commie or fascist yellow cock anon
>>25364810Because you absorb all cock equally.
>>25362822Qrd on Linebarger or John Man?
>>25362822Is there any short (like 400-500 pages max) history book on China where this 20C stuff is just the last chapter? Not "popular history," but it should offer cultural context...
great collection of essays on how china has changed culturally over the past ~70 years
>>25364831Family, Fields, and Ancestors by Lloyd Eastman
>CHINA BAD!>THAT MEANS JAPAN'S ACTIONS IN CHINA GOOD!!Why are (You) like this? They literally stabbed infants to death for sport.
The West vs. China or the West vs. Russia discussions remind me of that picture that has like 4 castles on both sides of a river and the punchline is that both sides are the same, it's just that the side one is supposed to consider theirs have their institutions described in a positive way while the institutions of the other side are described in negative terms. Like "our benevolent civil service" vs. "their authoritarian police state". It was originally about nationalism until somebody edited it to be about the west.
