It is by no means easy to write a comprehensive history of Maoist China, one of the most complicated and tumultuous periods of modern China. Felix Wemheuer's new book is a rich, well-organized and balanced account that approaches Maoist China from a new angle. None of the topics examined in this book goes far beyond what we generally know about PRC history. However, instead of adopting a “top-down” linear narrative in which people with different social identities are downplayed or mixed together, this study scrutinizes the experiences of “workers, peasants, local cadres, intellectuals, ‘ethnic minorities’, members of the old elites, men and women” under CCP rule across three key areas: social change, classification and conflict (p. 5). The structure and organization are the most satisfactory aspects of this study. After the introduction and chapter one, chapters two to eight follow a basic outline of PRC chronology. Each chapter starts with a story drawn from a memoir or oral history which serves as a springboard for the discussion that follows, and ends by presenting one or several incidents from internal or non-official sources. The author also selects three catchphrases generated in the period to capture the thrust of each of the chapters.

Wemheuer's description of Chinese society under Mao's rule in chapter one succeeds in paving the way for his discussions in the following chapters. As Wemheuer argues, Maoist China was a society in transition. Five major types of classification – household registration, rank, class status, gender and ethnicity – acted together to determine the social hierarchies and distribution structures in this rural–urban divided society. Chapter two (1949–1952) might well be read as the beginning of the whole story. Wemheuer's new angle is evident in the way he narrates the early years of the People's Republic of China. Skipping the Korean War, which has long been known by Party historians as the first of the three major campaigns since the founding of New China, Wemheuer instead examines how peasants, capitalists, women and “ethnic minorities” experienced the following four events: Land Reform, the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, the Marriage Law of 1950, and the reintegration of Xinjiang and Tibet, respectively. Chapter three (1953–1957) investigates the circumstances of workers, peasants, capitalists, inmates of labour camps and intellectuals in the period of the transformation to state socialism, described here as “the most fundamental social revolution of the entire Mao era” (p. 86). Chapter four (1958–1961) is based on Wemheuer's book on the Great Leap Famine, which cemented his reputation as an insightful commentator on that period. The chapter opens with a discussion of the “second failure of women's liberation,” before proceeding to examine how peasants struggled for survival during the Great Leap Famine and the disintegration of the United Front in Tibet. The “socialization of housework,” according to Wemheuer, represented not so much the liberation of women as a major disaster for rural China: “The tragedy of the Great Leap was not that it was caused by patriarchal resistance, but rather that, by its failure, it ended up strengthening the patriarchs’ hand” (p. 131). Chapter five investigates the post-famine years (1962–1965) by examining a series of policies of readjustment that changed the life trajectories of many people: the great downsizing of the urban workforce, the enforcement of birth planning in 1963, the Socialist Education Campaign, and the limited revival of the United Front. Chapter six (1966–1968) examines the first three years of the Cultural Revolution. Wemheuer's agenda for this chapter is not to “retell the political history of the Cultural Revolution in its full, dizzying detail.” Instead, he mainly focuses on four key narrative arcs: “conflicts and social change in the system of class status; the rebellion of permanent and temporary workers; the place of cadres and workers in the new revolutionary order; and the early Cultural Revolution in the countryside” (p. 196). Chapter seven (1969–1976) addresses the transformation of the working class, developments in the countryside, and the experiences of the “sent down youth” in the second part of the late Cultural Revolution. The final chapter harks back to chapter one and interrogates the impact of “five classifications” on post-Mao China. Wemheuer suggests that “China's classification system today still maintains striking continuities with the Mao era,” even though the reformist leadership abolished the class-line and class status, and reordered the other four classifications for the sake of legitimating social and political hierarchies (p. 286).

This book's unique perspective, accessible narrative, and the reasonable balance that the author strives to maintain make it a must-read for non-specialists interested in the Mao period. I would also recommend that specialists own a copy of this book as a reliable guide, because it draws on a vast number of cutting-edge Chinese and Western scholarly works on PRC history as well as a wealth of primary materials such as interviews, internal reports and photographs from archival and private sources.