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Recommendations for Nonfiction books on Communist China (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/books@lemmy.ml
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Hello!

May I please have some book recommendations on Communist China? I am interested in learning about the origins of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). I would like to understand the events leading up to the formation of the PRC, the rise of the CCP, and the development of Communist China. I am particularly interested in learning about key figures such as Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping, as well as other prominent leaders.

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[–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Dikötter is widely criticized by historians and sociologists. He's only praised in mainstream lay press by people who don't know anything about this topic. He wrote for that lay audience, not academic, because it is easier to launder his bias and dishonesty to an audience with no familiarity on this topic, which is why I said to become informed before reading him in order to avoud miseducation.

You can feel free to read those histories and criticisms, as you should always do before accepting or recommending a pop history book.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    What would you consider actual histories? I’m always happy to add more things on my own reading list.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    There are many out there and it's a challenge for me to recommend a specific order and set because I would want to think about tailoring it for a given person or audience. China is a large and multicultural country, the target of immense negative propaganda, and has an oft-ignored history of being colonized that is an essential part of the story. In another comment I recommended Wemheuer as a competent liberal historian, but that was only for the topic of famine when Mao was chairman, a counterpoint to Dikötter. Reading Wemheuer alone will give an incomplete picture and will be embedded with the author's capitalistic and Western biases, so I then recommended reading Mike Davis' Late Victorian Holocausts as a contextualizing piece and an introduction to a more appropriate historical, economic, and ecological framing of famine in China and other colonized and imperialized countries. But really there is a ton to read and I don't know which parts you would be most interested in. If you give me some direction I can recommend some works.

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