Burying Mao: Chinese Politics in the Age of Deng Xiaoping (review)

Reviews 357 ture," the compendium also shows that "these correspondences make it possible for Chinese and Western literature to enlighten and criticize each other mutually" (p. 250). Aldiough the essay focuses only on Chinese and Western examples ofthe faithless-widow motif, the author's new book on the text in relation to Du Fu's poetry makes clear she is quite familiar with a dialogical approach Qian uses to "discover the social and psychological reasons behind the motif (p. 253). The literary -quotation method adopted in the text abandons local context in favor of situating Chinese literature within world literature. These diverse essays, ofvarying scope and depth, accent the enduring significance of European Chinese studies to the global network of scholars and scholarship on China and its past. The youth ofmost ofthese authors bodes well for the future ofEuropean sinology. Lowell Skar University ofPennsylvania Lowell Skar is a graduate student specializing in the science and religion ofSong and Yuan society. Richard Baum. BuryingMao: Chinese Politics in the Age ofDengXiaoping. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. xviii, 489 PP- Hardcover $35.00, ISBN 0-691-03639-X. Richard Baum's new book seeks to give a comprehensive and detailed account of Chinese politics from Mao Zedong's death in 1976 to Deng Xiaoping's withdrawal from public view in 1993, with special emphasis on Deng's paramount role in the profound, convoluted, and highly unsettied transformation ofhis country during this period. Also receiving special attention are the policy differences, ideological conflicts, and shifting factional alignments within die top Chinese leadership as well as the student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square and their tragic ending in the spring of1989. Unlike his slim but very illuminating 1968 monograph (coauthored with another young scholar at that time), Baum's voluminous new book is marred by the© 1996 by University use of,^verifiable source materials, questionable or imprecise characterizations, and some other commissions and omissions. According to Baum, his purpose in the use ofunconfirmed or questionable sources is to sustain the book's narrative structure and strengthen its argument (p. xvii). He assures his readers that he has 358 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 taken pains to avoid materials that he had reason to believe were fabricated or otherwise embellished. However, Baum's assurance can hardly dispel the serious reader's doubt concerning the wisdom of using such sources in any scholarly undertaking , especially in a study on an important and controversial subject, where such materials are so frequentiy and extensively used as they are here. The problem of credibility is even exacerbated by Baum's failure to identify his sources clearly or sometimes to identify them at all, thus making it utterly impossible for a conscientious reader to ascertain their veracity. There is also a lack ofprecision, as in his unqualified characterization of China's economy from i960 to 1979 as "stagnant." Admittedly, after the Soviet Union's decision in i960 to cut off further shipments of industrial equipment to China and to withdraw all Soviet scientific and technical experts, China did suffer great setbacks in its industrial development and continued to face serious handicaps at least until the late 1970s. This was due mainly to the lack of alternative sources of advanced equipment and technology, since, during much of that time, the United States and its allies persisted in enforcing complete embargoes, boycotts , or severe trade restrictions against China from the early 1950s. Meanwhile, China's economy was burdened by a need for military preparedness against threats from the two superpowers and by the cost ofhaving to assist, among other things, Vietnam's national liberation struggle, which, ifthat failed, could once again expose a large part of China's southwestern border to direct Western threat. However, through self-reliance, hard work, and austerity, China in those years did make impressive, though not spectacular, economic progress, according to Chinese official statistics from the post-Mao period, the findings of leading American experts on the Chinese economy (e.g., Dwight H. Perkins of Harvard and the late Alexander Eckstein ofMichigan), and unclassified CIA intelligence estimates. Perhaps it was the low opinion of China's pre-1979 economy and other matters that has led...