The Communist Party of China

Book ann: Anthem Press

Friends and Enemies: The Past, Present and Future of the Communist Party of China by Kerry Brown, with a Foreword by Will Hutton
Anthem Press 2009
ISBN 9781843317814

Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One
A Disease of the Heart: The Rise to Power of the CCP
Chapter Two
Revolutionary Administrator: The Party in Power
Chapter Three
The Party in the Reform Era
Chapter Four
The Chinese Communist Party from 1992 to 2008
Chapter Five
The Challenges Facing China and What they mean for the CCP
Chapter Six
The Chinese Communist Party as it moves into the 21st Century
Suggested Reading

The Communist Party of China is the world's last remaining major Marxist Party still in control of a significant country. Friends and Enemies: The Past, Present and Future of the Communist Party of China is an accessible history and assessment of the Party, retelling the extraordinary tale of how it was established in the 1920s, nearly destroyed in the 1930s by internal and external battles, and, under the ruthless and controversial leadership of Mao Zedong, became a key fighting force in the war against the Japanese, winning final victory over the country in 1949.

The book tells of the stormy early decades of Communist rule in China, where initial hopes were replaced by the relentness political campaigns, culminating in the Cultural Revolution, during which Mao almost destroyed the very party he had been so instrumental in bringing to power. It looks at the period post-Mao, under the more pragmatic leadership of Deng, where the CCP reshaped and reevaluated itself, nearly being felled by student demonstrations in 1989, before reasserting itself in the last decade as a half as the most powerful entity in a country that has become the world's third largest economy.

In the final two chapters, the major challenges facing the Party as it moves into the 21st century - energy security, environmental issues, and economical and social problems- are evaluated, with the final Chapter offering a judgement on what the Party's likelihood is to survive, and how it might look twenty years from now. For further information consult [the publisher's website].

Kerry Brown is Senior Fellow at Chatham House on the Asia Programme. His Struggling Giant: China in the 21st Century was published in June 2007, and The Rise of the Dragon: Chinese Investment Flows in the Reform Period in February 2008. He has been published in The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Far Eastern Economic Review, Index on Censorship, and other public ations in the US, Europe, China, Hong Kong, and Australia, and commented on China for the BBC, ITN, ABC, the Today Programme, Al Jazeera, CNN and others.