The Great Transformation

Named one of the Financial Times’s Best Books of 2024 in History

“A superb history of China’s transition into and out of the Cultural Revolution… . Chen and Westad—two of the best archival historians of Communist China writing today—coolly but vividly recount the extraordinary drama of this metamorphosis.”—Julia Lovell, Financial Times

“By choosing to begin with Mao’s final years, Messrs. Westad and Chen build a strong case for their account of how and why events played out after the leader’s death.”—Maura Elizabeth Cunningham, Wall Street Journal

“[A] compelling book by two of the best historians of the modern Chinese experience.”—Tony Barber, Financial Times

“Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian make an effective partnership… . [They] expertly and authoritatively cover events inside and outside China during a momentous time in the country’s history.”—Kerry Brown, Literary Review

“The Great Transformation offers a rich and nuanced interpretation of the ‘long 1970s’ as a critical turning point in modern Chinese history.”—Stefan Messingschlager, Neue Politische Literatur

“To understand today’s China and where it may be going it is necessary to understand how it got to here—the politics, the pressures, the trade-offs, and legacy of the ‘The Long 1970s.’ You can do no better in this regard than start by reading The Great Transformation.”—Martin Petersen, The Cipher

“This book sets a new standard for writing about China’s transition from revolution to reform. It should be on the must-read list of all serious readers who want to understand the historical roots of contemporary China.”—Yanjie Huang, Pacific Affairs

“Westad and Chen’s The Great Transformation represents a major contribution to the historiography of China’s reform era and to the comparative study of capitalist transitions.”— Patricia M. Thornton, The China Quarterly

“Important and innovative.”—Rana Mitter, Project Syndicate

“Westad and Chen have written a masterful account of China’s modernization that illuminates the path it took to emerge as America’s only true peer competitor.”—Graham Allison, author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?

“In The Great Transformation, Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian ask a fresh question: How did the People’s Republic of China emerge from the lunacies of the Cultural Revolution and embark on the path to prosperity—a market-based industrialization that prior to 1978 would have been denounced as the ‘capitalist road’? Deeply researched and clearly written, this new account of a transformative period gives due weight to the local and international forces at work—as well as to the roads not taken, which might have been more liberal politically but less effective economically.”—Niall Ferguson, author of Civilization: The West and the Rest and Kissinger, 1923–1968: The Idealist

Odd Arne Westad is the Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University. His books include The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, winner of the Bancroft Prize, and Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750. He lives in New Haven, CT.

Chen Jian is Distinguished Global Network Professor of History at NYU and NYU Shanghai and Hu Shih Professor of History Emeritus at Cornell University. His books include China’s Road to the Korean War, Mao’s China and the Cold War, and Zhou Enlai: A Life. He lives in Ithaca, NY.

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