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During a period of ideological, political
and cultural upheaval in China over recent years, David
Bonavia, as The Times correspondent in Peking, has
been uniquely placed to witness the effects of change over
all levels of Chinese society.
In this landmark study of a people living
through what is perhaps the most massive revolution in history,
he gives us a fascinating and intimate view of the variegated
fabric of life for the ordinary Chinese -- their attitudes
to work, their family concerns, their roles as men and women,
parents and children, their competition for education and
its privileges, their officials and laws, their new consumerism,
their changing language, their increasing numbers.
China's place in the world of the 1980s
is analysed in the light of the author's long study of Chinese
foreign policy, and the new relationships with the United
States and other nations are weighted against China's mounting
conflict with the Soviet Union.
For the first time in thirty years, China
is ready to re-enter the international forum on friendly
terms with the West: the West is equally ready to welcome
her, and the immense benefits of political and commercial
partnership that will follow. The special achievement of
this timely and important book is in allowing us to see
how the Chinese themselves stand at the dawning of this
new era.
David Bonavia is chief of The Times's
Peking Bureau and special correspondent for China and East
Asia for the Far Eastern Economic Review. Fluent
in Russian as well as in Chinese, Mr. Bonavia was posted
to Moscow by The Times in 1969, after serving two
years as their Saigon correspondent. Expelled three years
later by the Soviets for contacting dissidents, he became
The Times's first correspondent in Communist Peking
and travelled extensively in China, covering the major political
and social developments there.
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