Historian whose Mao’s China and After judged the Chinese revolution critically from within the Marxist tradition
He brought Mao-era China into US classrooms from 1968, then spent his later years recording how the reform era slid into what he called bureaucratic capitalism.
From Detroit, he taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His first book, Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism (1967), showed how nationalism and faith in the peasantry combined as Marxism was received in China. Mao’s China and After, first published in 1977, became the standard textbook history of the People’s Republic, reading Maoism through the tension between socialist ideals and the modernisation of a backward country. He criticised the repression of the Mao years while judging that the marketisation of the reform era had abandoned socialism’s promise.
Career Timeline
- 1968–1999Professor of history, University of Wisconsin–Madison