A Social History of Maoist China: Conflict and Change, 1949–1976. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2019. xv, 331 pp. £59.99. (Paper: £22.99; E-book £24.00).

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Wemheuer, Felix. A Social History of Maoist China: Conflict and Change, 1949–1976. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2019. xv, 331 pp. £59.99. (Paper: £22.99; E-book £24.00).

Seventy years after the inauguration of the People's Republic and more than forty years after Mao's death, the history of Mao-era China is finally emerging as a field with its own institutions, publications, and dedicated undergraduate courses. However, historians wanting to teach the Mao years are not well served with textbooks. Maurice Meisner's Mao's China and After, while excellent background reading, is too detailed for classroom use, and other textbooks cover China's “long twentieth century” from the late Qing to the present, rather than China's socialist years. Felix Wemheuer's Social History of Maoist China fills the gap. With slightly over 300 pages, it is concise; it is also up to date, based on the best available Chinese and Western scholarship, clearly presented, readable, and balanced. It is likely to become the standard textbook for graduate and undergraduate courses and to remain so for years to come.

The book delivers precisely what the title promises. It is a social history: while high-level politics are discussed, the book's focus is firmly on the workers, peasants, cadres, etc. that make up China's population. Unusually, and in my view refreshingly, Mao does not occupy central stage. Wemheuer notes the instances in which Mao put his stamp on events, but also shows that many features of the new society cannot be traced back to the Chairman himself. It is a history of China under Mao, starting from the foundation of the country and ending with Mao's death. Wemheuer keeps references to pre-1949 China to the strictest minimum; even the formative Yan'an period receives only a cursory glance. This is unusual – most comparable works emphasize the heavy weight of history on the shoulders of China's leaders – but it works well. I was surprised how little prehistory is needed to make sense of Chinese socialism; perhaps China is not as sui generis as area specialists assume.

The book's central argument is that despite its professed egalitarianism, the PRC under Mao was a deeply unequal society. Inequality resulted from five interlocking binaries. Household registration, which marked people as rural or urban, was...