Review: Asia: Mao's People
| Published date | 01 December 1981 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070208103600421 |
| Date | 01 December 1981 |
| Author | Graham E. Johnson |
| Subject Matter | Review |
930
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
National
capabilities
analyses
of
this kind,
can of
course,
offer
only
part
of
the
answer
to
those
seeking
to
predict
future
Chinese
behav-
iour,
because
they
offer
only
limited
insight
into
the
goals
to
which
these
capabilities
are
to
be
harnessed.
But
a
balanced
inventory
such
as
this
provides
a
useful
basis
for realistically
judging
the
limits with-
in
which
Chinese
leaders
must
operate
and
should
be
of
interest
both
to
students
and
professional analysts
of
Chinese
foreign
policy.
Victor
C.
Falkenheim/University
of
Toronto
MAO'S
PEOPLE
Sixteen
portraits
of
life
in
revolutionary China
B.
Michael
Frolic
Cambridge,
Mass:
Harvard
University
Press,
ig8o,
XiV,
278pp,
Us$15.00
Fifteen
years
ago,
as
a
young
graduate student
of
Russian
politics, Pro-
fessor
Frolic
made
his
first
visit
to
China
and
reported
to
his fellow
students at
Cornell
University on
an exciting and
beautiful land,
then
closed to
most
Americans
and
visited
by
the
odd
Canadian.
The
years
since
then
have been
very
dramatic.
Professor
Frolic
has
become
an
academic,
has
administered
a
research
centre
in
Hong
Kong,
and
has
been
cultural
attach6
at
the
Canadian
embassy
in
Beijing.
Over
fifteen
years
he has
been
strategically
placed
to
observe
the
twists
and
turns
in
China.
He
has
brought
his
rich
experience
and
his
considerable
knowledge
of
comparative
(communist) politics
together
to
produce
a
rich and
delightful
book
on
China
and
its
character
from
the
mid-
'sixties
until
very
recent
times.
The
book
is
composed
of
a
series
of
sixteen
vignettes
-
a
selection
of
stories
from
an
array
of
Hong
Kong-based
informants
with an
as-
tonishing
range
of
experiences.
They
are,
perhaps,
a
little
uneven,
but
they
bring
a
human
dimension
to
an
understanding
of
developments
in
China
over
the
past
decade
and
a
half,
which are
complex
and
often
buried
in
a
rhetoric
that
is
not
always
easy
to
interpret.
In
the
past
few
years
-
since
the fall of the
now
infamous
'Gang
of
Four'
-
there
has
been
a
substantial
reinterpretation
of
events since
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