Provides a sweeping, critical account of the political and economic changes that have transformed China since 1949, challenging conventional analyses. "I grew up thinking of China as an archetypical Communist country-a country that unlike the Soviet Union didn't take the 'capitalist road.' In a brilliant new book, Robert Schaeffer reconceptualizes the history of modern China and of China's economic development since the revolution. To Schaeffer, China was always capitalist, but of a kind that disguised, and was meant to justify, the brutal process of capital accumulation necessary to create an industrial China. What distinguished 'Communist' China's first thirty years from its last was that recently, it has succeeded, and has built a major capitalist economy. Yet, as Schaeffer shows, its success has been at the expense of its own citizenry, and to some extent that of other countries. I highly recommend this book." -John B. Judis, Senior Editor, The New Republic, and author of The Folly of Empire