CHINA: One Hundred Years of the Chinese Communist Party
Greg Benton is Greg is the acknowledged leading expert on the history of the Chinese Communist Party and especially China’s Trotskyist opposition and isEmeritus Professor at Cardiff University.
Last month marked the centenary of the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party. Just a quarter of a century later, it was already in power. Today it is ruling a population of a billion and a half – almost one-fifth of the world’s population. Over the last four decades, China’s economy has grown by almost 10 per cent a year, and the lives of more than 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty.
Brought to the cities by a peasant guerrilla army, the Chinese revolution developed along sharply distinct lines from those anticipated by classic Marxist theory.
Greg addressed the following questions in his lead off -
What is the real legacy of Maoism?
Why did Mao’s guerrilla army not bring to power a new feudal dynasty, as happened so many times in previous Chinese history?
What were the key features distinguishing the Chinese from the Russian communist parties?
To what extent has the CCP’s conquest of power through guerilla warfare determined its character as a bureaucratic dictatorship?
Over the years, the CCP has imposed abrupt shifts in policy. What are the mechanisms by which it has achieved these?
What was the real character of the Cultural Revolution?
What are the lessons of the Tienanmen Square uprising and its bloody aftermath?
How dominant is the planned economy as it engages in international trade, promotes private enterprise and coexists with billionaire entrepreneurs?
How secure is the personal dictatorship of Xi Jinping?
What is the popular response to the development of one of the most unequal societies in the world?
What will be the party’s final reckoning?
Greg is a prolific author who has written, edited or translated countless books on China, including:
Mao Zedong and the Chinese Revolution
Was Mao Really a Monster?
Prophets Unarmed: Chinese Trotskyists in Revolution, War, Jail, and the Return from Limbo
Poets of the Chinese Revolution
Additional recommended reading:
Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary 1919-1949 by Wang Fanxi
Mao Zedong Thought, by Wang Fanxi