Revolution and rule: Where do we go from here?

Abstract

Within the confines of its author's essentially administrative focus and concerns, Canton Under Communism is extremely informative, nuanced but lucid, and strikingly fair-minded. With the possible exception of Franz Schurmann's Ideology and Organization in Communist China, Professor Vogel's book is undisputably the finest work on post-'49 China produced to date by an American social scientist. If less brilliant than Schurmann's book, Canton Under Communism is much more manageable and, in that sense, more useful as a high-quality, standard text in university courses. Its publication, moreover, may well signal the end of an era of American scholarship on Communist China.