Governing China: From Revolution to Reform

This is a very good book on how China actually works. For those of us who did not know a thing about this country it really sums it up nicley. This book tells how Mao and Deng pushed China to make it better. It goes in depth on how those two pushed the cadres into early retirment to bring in younger workers who new about the mordern technology and who were also more highly educated. I also really enjoyed how the author made clear how China is and can affect the future of the U.S and the entire world.

This book is a great introduction to the topic, but is becoming somewhat dated for those who are looking for analysis of the past five years. Lieberthal was busy guiding Clinton's China policy on the National Security Council--no time for writing. Reportedly he has begun work on a new edition.

Chinese politics is incredibly tricky. We tend to think of Mao and Deng so dominating this nation that we forget that no one, not even Mao, can rule 1 billion people without a bureaucracy. I agree with the review below that someone trying to look in depth at a topic in Chinese politics will not be satisfied with this work. That's not its point, though. This and Baum's Burying Mao are two books that a reasonably intelligent reader can read on their own in order to get the basics. This does not deal much with international policy or with explicit comparisons between the Soviet and Chinese states. However, Lieberthal lays out clearly the ministries, their responsibilities and what happened when Mao, in his staggeringly limited vision, decided to bypass the massive structures that made the nation work.Though limited temporally, this sets the stage for the rise of the Chinese Communists and works allows a reader, without wading through too much minutae, to understand what it was that Mao set out to accomplish, how much Deng undid, and what was actually set into motion within the Party and government when these two historical giants flung the nation at a new idea.

This is an excellent book if someone is looking for an introduction to chinese politics, history and its political economy. It is comprehensive and easy to grasp, and one of the few books of its kind that I actually found difficult to put down. It is not, however, the best book to look to for an in-depth discussion of specific topics. You should look elsewhere - you could start with Lieberthal's bibliography - if your intrests lie within a narrow subject.