Spartacus Review

Volume 21: 27th June, 2008

Chinese History

Title: Fanshen

Author: William Hinton

Editor:

Publisher: Monthly Review Press

Price: £18.95

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Mao Zedong

Category:

More than forty years after its initial publication, William Hinton's Fanshen continues to be the essential volume for those fascinated with China's revolutionary process of rural reform and social change. A pioneering work, "Fanshan" is a marvelous and revealing look into life in the Chinese countryside, where tradition and modernity have had both a complimentary and caustic relationship in the years since the Chinese Communist Party first came to power. It is a rare, concrete record of social struggle and transformation, as witnessed by a participant. "Fanshen" continues to offer profound insight into the lives of peasants and China's complex social processes. This classic volume includes a new preface by Fred Magdoff.