Description
Book SynopsisAt once a history of policing in China, as well as a political history of "the nation" in the 20th century.
Trade Review“Eric Hobsbawm, with some irony and much love for the history profession, once remarked that ‘theoreticians of all kinds circle around the peaceful herds of historians as they graze on their rich pastures of primary sources.’ He endorsed the encircling of those pastures. Michael Dutton is one of those social science theoreticians who graze on the same rich fields, but at the same time he takes Asian studies and history into new and fascinating areas.”—Børge Bakken, author of
The Exemplary Society: Human Improvement, Social Control, and the Dangers of Modernity in China “Michael Dutton’s
Policing Chinese Politics is a work of deeply committed political scholarship. It will be of great interest to scholars of Chinese politics and to historians and critics of the socialist movement.”—Piers Beirne, Department of Criminology, University of Southern Maine
Table of ContentsPreface vii
Introduction: A Theoretical Explanation 1
1. Friends and Enemies: The War Within 23
2. From Class to Nation: Limiting the Excess in Yan’an 71
3. The Government of Struggle: Institutions of the Binary 133
4. The Years That Burned 197
5. The End of the (Mass) Line? Chinese Politics in the Era of the Contract 247
Concluding Reflections 301
Glossary 317
Notes 331
References 375
Index 395
