Steven M. Goldstein

China in Transition: The Political Foundations of Incremental Reform *

As the Peoples Republic of China approaches a half century of existence, it seems to be an anomaly. Not only has it survived “the mass extinction of Leninist regimes,” it also continues along the path of reform. And this is despite the widely accepted assumption that Soviet-style systems are, by their very nature, incompatible with the assumptions of systemic reform - namely, the gradual and incremental transformation of economic and political systems by leaders who “use and build upon the existing structures of society.”

The Chinese Revolution and the Colonial Areas: The View form Yenan, 1937–41

The years 1937 to 1941 constitute the formative period in the Maoist leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), when Mao and his colleagues developed much of the political and military strategy that was to guide the Party through the anti-Japanese war and into the civil war period. This package of revolutionary prescriptions – loosely labelled the Yenan experience – is generally recognized to have had a powerful, lingering hold on the Party leadership.