Almost 40 years of amazing reform have transformed China. Yet Xi Jinping seems to want to rebuild the Maoist system of the early 1950s. Why?
Roderick MacFarquhar is the Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science and formerly Director of the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University. His publications include The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals;The Sino-Soviet Dispute; China under Mao: Politics Takes Command; Sino-American Relations, 1949-1971; The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao; the final two volumes of the Cambridge History of China (edited with the late John Fairbank); The Politics of China2nd Ed: The Eras of Mao and Deng; and a trilogy, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution. He was the founding editor of The China Quarterly and has been a fellow at Columbia University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Royal Institute for International Affairs. In previous personae, he has been a journalist, a TV commentator, and a Member of British Parliament. His most recent, jointly-authored book on the Cultural Revolution entitled Mao’s Last Revolution, was published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2006.