Short description:

Now updated with a chapter-length afterword by the editors on the end of the Deng era and its aftermath, this book provides a comprehensive survey of a nation in transition.

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Long description:

Now updated with a chapter-length afterword by the editors on theend of the Deng era and its aftermath, China in the 1990sprovides a comprehensive survey of a nation in transition. Anunderstanding of this complex process requires a multidisciplinary andmultidimensional approach, which the editors have achieved by bringingtogether experts from Britain, the United States, Europe, Australia,and Hong Kong who examine China's economic, political, military,cultural and social achievements and problems.

The difficulties China still faces are enormous, some of them of itsown making: pollution, urban sprawl, the insecurity of food supplies,the risks of political authoritarianism and the perils ofliberalisation. Its population is still growing dramatically and islikely to be 1.5 billion by 2015, three times what it was when theP.R.C. was established in 1949. But since embarking on a reformprogramme which, at the time seemed experimental and hard to reconcilewith official ideology, it has gone from being the 'sick man ofAsia' to being one of the world's largest and fastestdeveloping economies in what now looks to be a remarkably effective andwell-managed transition.

With an impressive bibliography and an excellent short guide to further reading, this collection is an informative guide to the rapidly changing and unpredictable Chinese polity for the undergraduate. Sinophiles should find something of merit in this account of a potential superpower awakening from its slumber.

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