Marxism, China, and Development

China has always been something of a mystery to Westerners. For one genera-tion, Mao Zedong and his followers were simple "agrarian reformers," while for another they were the "communist emperor and his blue ants." In the 1970s, some of the finest Sinologists believed there was much the United States could learn from Mao''s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution with regard to bureaucracy, criminal...