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The history the Chinese Communist Party has tried to erase: the dramatic political debates of the 1980s that could have put China on a path to greater openness.On a hike in Guangdong Province in January 1984, Deng Xiaoping was warned that his path was a steep and treacherous one. "Never turn back," the Chinese leader replied. That became a mantra as the government forged ahead with reforms in the face of heated contestation over the nation's future. For a time, everything was on the table, including democratization and China's version of socialism. But deliberation came to a sudden halt in spring 1989, with protests and purges, massacre and repression. Since then, Beijing has worked intensively to suppress the memory of this era of openness.Julian Gewirtz recovers the debates of the 1980s, tracing the Communist Party's diverse attitudes toward markets, state control, and sweeping technological change, as well as freewheeling public argument over political liberalization. The administration considered bold proposals from within the party and without, including separation between the party and the state, empowering the private sector, and establishing an independent judiciary. After Tiananmen, however, Beijing systematically erased these discussions of alternative directions. Using newly available Chinese sources, Gewirtz details how the leadership purged the key reformist politician Zhao Ziyang, quashed the student movement, recast the transformations of the 1980s as the inevitable products of consensus, and indoctrinated China and the international community in the new official narrative.Never Turn Back offers a revelatory look at how different China's rise might have been and at the foundations of strongman rule under Xi Jinping, who has intensified the policing of history to bolster his own authority

"The 1980s saw spirited debate in China, as officials and the public pressed for economic and political liberalization. But after Tiananmen, the Communist Party erased the reform debate from memory. Julian Gewirtz shows how leadership expunged alternative visions of China's future and set the stage for the policing of history under Xi Jinping"--

Introduction Forbidden History -- Reassessing History, Recasting Modernization -- Part I Ideology and Propaganda -- Spiritual Pollutions and Sugar-Coated Bullets -- The Scourge of Bourgeois Liberalization -- Part II The Economy -- Liberating the Productive Forces -- The Powers of the Market -- Part III Technology -- Responding to the New Technological Revolution -- A Matter of the Life and Death of the Nation -- Part IV Political Modernization -- Masters of the Country -- Explore without Fear -- Part V Before Tiananmen -- Two Rounds of Applause -- A Great Flood -- We Came Too Late -- Part VI Tiananmen and After -- Political Crackdown and Narrative Crisis -- Recasting Reform and Opening -- The Socialist Survivor in a Capitalist World -- Conclusion A New Era

Unlikely Partners recounts the story of how Chinese politicians and intellectuals looked beyond their country's borders for economic guidance at a key crossroads in the nation's tumultuous twentieth century. Julian Gewirtz offers a dramatic tale of competition for influence between reformers and hardline conservatives during the Deng Xiaoping era, bringing to light China's productive exchanges with the West. When Mao Zedong died in 1976, his successors seized the opportunity to reassess the wisdom of China's rigid commitment to Marxist doctrine. With Deng Xiaoping's blessing, China's economic gurus scoured the globe for fresh ideas that would put China on the path to domestic prosperity and ultimately global economic power. Leading foreign economists accepted invitations to visit China to share their expertise, while Chinese delegations traveled to the United States, Hungary, Great Britain, West Germany, Brazil, and other countries to examine new ideas. Chinese economists partnered with an array of brilliant thinkers, including Nobel Prize winners, World Bank officials, battle-scarred veterans of Eastern Europe's economic struggles, and blunt-speaking free-market fundamentalists. Nevertheless, the push from China's senior leadership to implement economic reforms did not go unchallenged, nor has the Chinese government been eager to publicize its engagement with Western-style innovations. Even today, Chinese Communists decry dangerous Western influences and officially maintain that China's economic reinvention was the Party's achievement alone. Unlikely Partners sets forth the truer story, which has continuing relevance for China's complex and far-reaching relationship with the West

How did China emerge from isolation and poverty under Mao Zedong to become the economic powerhouse shaping the 21st century? Soon after Mao died in 1976, China's leaders invited many of the leading foreign economists to come to China and sought their input on economic policy. This book demonstrates the constantly negotiated receptivity of Chinese policymakers who reached out to foreign economists and interpreted their ideas as they sought to incorporate market elements into their country's socialist economy. Working together, interacting in complex dynamics of influence and adaptation, they changed China.--