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Revolution and Counterrevolution in China: The Paradoxes of Chinese Struggle
A major new contribution to the study of China’s revolutions and counterrevolutions over the past century
Over recent decades China has experienced massive change and development. China is the world’s fastest growing economy, and has become a global superpower once again. But this development has thrown up a number of seemingly intractable contradictions, both political and economic. In this panoramic study of Chinese history in the twentieth century and its place in the development of global capitalism, Lin Chun argues that the paradoxes of contemporary Chinese society are not simply the product of the development of capitalism or modernity in the country. They are instead the product of the contradictions of its long revolutionary history, as well as the social and political consequences of its post-socialist transition.
Published to coincide with the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, Revolution and Counterrevolution in China charts China’s epic revolutionary trajectory in search of a socialist alternative to the global system, and asks whether market reform must repudiate and overturn the revolution and its legacy.
Over recent decades China has experienced massive change and development. China is the world’s fastest growing economy, and has become a global superpower once again. But this development has thrown up a number of seemingly intractable contradictions, both political and economic. In this panoramic study of Chinese history in the twentieth century and its place in the development of global capitalism, Lin Chun argues that the paradoxes of contemporary Chinese society are not simply the product of the development of capitalism or modernity in the country. They are instead the product of the contradictions of its long revolutionary history, as well as the social and political consequences of its post-socialist transition.
Published to coincide with the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, Revolution and Counterrevolution in China charts China’s epic revolutionary trajectory in search of a socialist alternative to the global system, and asks whether market reform must repudiate and overturn the revolution and its legacy.
352 pages, Paperback
First published September 28, 2021
About the author
Chun Lin
12 books6 followersLin Chun is Professor Emeritus in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the author of The British New Left (1993), The Transformation of Chinese Socialism (2006), China and Global Capitalism (2013), and Revolution and Counterrevolution in China (2021), among other titles. She is also (co-)editor of eight volumes. Her many articles appear in journals, books, and other outlets, and in various languages. She has served on multiple international steering, editorial, and book prize committees as well as other collaborative projects among her many intellectual and professional engagements.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 6, 2021
If you were looking for a breezy read about the purported subject matter of the book, you've come to the wrong place. The book is very academic and heavy on debate interventions rather than narrative construction. It also doesn't really know what authorial voice to go for, mixing constantly between a manifestoesque register and dry academic exposition.
Nonetheless there is a 5 star worthy reference book on revolution and counter-revolution in China hidden under this and it is really clear that Chun really really knows her shit. So if you're writing sth. on China this is probably a good place to go, but maybe not for your introduction into the subject matter.
Nonetheless there is a 5 star worthy reference book on revolution and counter-revolution in China hidden under this and it is really clear that Chun really really knows her shit. So if you're writing sth. on China this is probably a good place to go, but maybe not for your introduction into the subject matter.
December 10, 2021
pretty dense, but covers a lot of ground. highly recommended
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May 22, 2026Overall I have sort of mixed feelings about this one, but Lin knows a ton about China and makes principled arguments about the PRC failing, as she sees it, to live up to its ideals. She offers a fairly standard left-wing criticism of China, that the opening-up reforms are a neoliberal betrayal of the revolutionary ideals the PRC was founded on. She has a lot of admiration for Mao-era China’s socialist and communist ambitions and believes those have been abandoned at the expense of Chinese citizens’ well-being and the government’s moral legitimacy; modern China, she writes, “blends seemingly depoliticized nationalism and globalism, all subject to the power of capital” (243), allowing foreign interests to loot the nation and restricting personal freedoms while serving rather than challenging global capitalism.
Late in the book Lin invokes E.H. Carr’s famous comment on the Soviet Union, that the danger for us isn’t that we’ll ignore its mistakes but that “we shall be tempted to forget altogether, and to pass over in silence, its immense achievements.” Lin believes this is even truer of Mao-era China (314). The book’s early sections deal with revolutionary China, especially the continuous revolution of the PRC under Mao, which she contrasts with today’s (in her telling) elite-driven, capital-oriented, non-ideological CCP. Lin praises the calculable gains of the Mao era: between 1950 and 1976 China saw industrial sector growth of 13.5%/year, a quintupling of national income, and population growth of almost 400 million due to increased life expectancy and plummeting infant mortality (81). But she also commends “the revolution’s participatory tradition, the Maoist mass line politics, and radical democracy” (89)—traits erased during the opening-up era. She believes that the Great Leap Forward was disastrous and that the Cultural Revolution was excessive and targeted the wrong people at the wrong time, but in a later section she offers a powerful response to those who exaggerate those failures for political gain (276-81). “Either way,” she writes, “the CCP’s distinguished tradition of theoretical struggle and cultural politics has been lost” (109).
The center of the book is part three, The Neoliberal Adaptation, where Lin expands on her criticisms of modern China. These criticisms fall into three big areas, and each gets its own chapter: China’s political economy, social order, and international relations. Lin first describes a partly neoliberalized China where smallholding farmers are sold out to agribusiness and landless migrant laborers suffer as state-owned enterprises are bought up by compradors and American companies. The Party has also dropped its class language and now claims to represent everyone, not just laborers, which in effect has led it to abandon workers: “This loss of 'sacred labour' - a century-old motto - represents an aggregate defeat of the Chinese working class and leaves behind the magnificent history of workers' struggle, sacrifice and triumph” (177). Meanwhile, the Mao-era policy of celebrating minority ethnic groups’ culture has been replaced by Han supremacism, and feminist gains have stalled or been lost. Internationally, China has gone from pragmatic anti-capitalist resistance to appeasement and a desire to become a major geopolitical player. “These opposing lines are grounded on China's reimagined self-positioning on the world stage: from socialism to socialism with Chinese characteristics'; from the internationalism of uniting the world's class nations to a globalism of capital expansion and resource extraction; from independence to subordination; and, in historical terms, from revolution to counterrevolution.” (243).
What does Lin think China ought to do? Despite the above paragraph, she doesn’t think modern China’s all bad. She has a mixed or positive view of a lot of Chinese policies, like the Belt and Road Initiative (246-53). She also praises China’s COVID response (320-3). In the closing pages she criticizes “compromised international leftism” that condemns both “the US and the PRC, as though the two countries are politically equivalent,” asking, “Can a warmonger with troops stationed and combating abroad and warships navigated often thousands of miles away from home, and a road and plant builder abroad, even if self-motivated, really be equitable?” (334). China’s at its best, then, when it’s drawing on its socialist heritage, and she thinks this is the path forward: that a wave of disaffected young people will demand the Party live up to its name and get the country working for them rather than for foreign capital. This, not the current Chinese system or one that mimics Western neoliberal regimes, would be real democracy.
While I agree with a lot of the specifics here, I don’t know that I buy Lin’s conclusions. First, I wish she’d given us her own definition of neoliberalism and made an argument about which aspects of the Chinese economy she thinks the term does and doesn’t apply to. Instead things are muddled. We’re told “a neoliberal counterrevolution has overturned much of what China’s socialist reformers initially intended” (120), but even after finishing the book I feel like I’d struggle to explain what specifically this means, let alone why it happened. No doubt this is partly because the book’s for people with more knowledge of China and neoliberalism than I have, but it's also because it’s dense and probably could be organized more clearly. Variations of the same argument are often repeated, and I wasn’t always clear on what point Lin’s making; too often I would read a couple pages on a subject and be left unclear precisely how that section fits into the whole.
I also don’t know about some of the book’s geopolitical claims. Lin believes, for example, that China’s economic entanglement with the United States means it’s subordinated itself to America and the US dollar. “The grim reality is plain: there is no parity between China and the US, militarily, geopolitically or indeed in any other aspect of power” (259). Is this true? I’m not so sure. Things have changed a lot since the book came out, but this isn’t what I was reading about the US-China relationship in 2020, and it’s even less so now. I also think it's too simple to say that the Party has become non-ideological—I think I would say Xi, Wang Huning, et al. are ideologues who are intensely pragmatic. Maybe that’s the same thing, though.
Regardless, there’s a lot of good information here. Lin is interested in making sure China works for the people, not in subordinating it further to capital, and I'll look here if I ever need to read a fair but critical analysis of modern Chinese policy. She’s consistent, honest about what she thinks ought to be done, and in conversation with plenty of great thinkers. She’s got me more interested in reading Wang Hui and made me feel bad about not having read Gramsci. But she also made me want to read Isabella Weber on China and neoliberalism to see if I can get a clearer picture of the relationship than I got here.
Late in the book Lin invokes E.H. Carr’s famous comment on the Soviet Union, that the danger for us isn’t that we’ll ignore its mistakes but that “we shall be tempted to forget altogether, and to pass over in silence, its immense achievements.” Lin believes this is even truer of Mao-era China (314). The book’s early sections deal with revolutionary China, especially the continuous revolution of the PRC under Mao, which she contrasts with today’s (in her telling) elite-driven, capital-oriented, non-ideological CCP. Lin praises the calculable gains of the Mao era: between 1950 and 1976 China saw industrial sector growth of 13.5%/year, a quintupling of national income, and population growth of almost 400 million due to increased life expectancy and plummeting infant mortality (81). But she also commends “the revolution’s participatory tradition, the Maoist mass line politics, and radical democracy” (89)—traits erased during the opening-up era. She believes that the Great Leap Forward was disastrous and that the Cultural Revolution was excessive and targeted the wrong people at the wrong time, but in a later section she offers a powerful response to those who exaggerate those failures for political gain (276-81). “Either way,” she writes, “the CCP’s distinguished tradition of theoretical struggle and cultural politics has been lost” (109).
The center of the book is part three, The Neoliberal Adaptation, where Lin expands on her criticisms of modern China. These criticisms fall into three big areas, and each gets its own chapter: China’s political economy, social order, and international relations. Lin first describes a partly neoliberalized China where smallholding farmers are sold out to agribusiness and landless migrant laborers suffer as state-owned enterprises are bought up by compradors and American companies. The Party has also dropped its class language and now claims to represent everyone, not just laborers, which in effect has led it to abandon workers: “This loss of 'sacred labour' - a century-old motto - represents an aggregate defeat of the Chinese working class and leaves behind the magnificent history of workers' struggle, sacrifice and triumph” (177). Meanwhile, the Mao-era policy of celebrating minority ethnic groups’ culture has been replaced by Han supremacism, and feminist gains have stalled or been lost. Internationally, China has gone from pragmatic anti-capitalist resistance to appeasement and a desire to become a major geopolitical player. “These opposing lines are grounded on China's reimagined self-positioning on the world stage: from socialism to socialism with Chinese characteristics'; from the internationalism of uniting the world's class nations to a globalism of capital expansion and resource extraction; from independence to subordination; and, in historical terms, from revolution to counterrevolution.” (243).
What does Lin think China ought to do? Despite the above paragraph, she doesn’t think modern China’s all bad. She has a mixed or positive view of a lot of Chinese policies, like the Belt and Road Initiative (246-53). She also praises China’s COVID response (320-3). In the closing pages she criticizes “compromised international leftism” that condemns both “the US and the PRC, as though the two countries are politically equivalent,” asking, “Can a warmonger with troops stationed and combating abroad and warships navigated often thousands of miles away from home, and a road and plant builder abroad, even if self-motivated, really be equitable?” (334). China’s at its best, then, when it’s drawing on its socialist heritage, and she thinks this is the path forward: that a wave of disaffected young people will demand the Party live up to its name and get the country working for them rather than for foreign capital. This, not the current Chinese system or one that mimics Western neoliberal regimes, would be real democracy.
While I agree with a lot of the specifics here, I don’t know that I buy Lin’s conclusions. First, I wish she’d given us her own definition of neoliberalism and made an argument about which aspects of the Chinese economy she thinks the term does and doesn’t apply to. Instead things are muddled. We’re told “a neoliberal counterrevolution has overturned much of what China’s socialist reformers initially intended” (120), but even after finishing the book I feel like I’d struggle to explain what specifically this means, let alone why it happened. No doubt this is partly because the book’s for people with more knowledge of China and neoliberalism than I have, but it's also because it’s dense and probably could be organized more clearly. Variations of the same argument are often repeated, and I wasn’t always clear on what point Lin’s making; too often I would read a couple pages on a subject and be left unclear precisely how that section fits into the whole.
I also don’t know about some of the book’s geopolitical claims. Lin believes, for example, that China’s economic entanglement with the United States means it’s subordinated itself to America and the US dollar. “The grim reality is plain: there is no parity between China and the US, militarily, geopolitically or indeed in any other aspect of power” (259). Is this true? I’m not so sure. Things have changed a lot since the book came out, but this isn’t what I was reading about the US-China relationship in 2020, and it’s even less so now. I also think it's too simple to say that the Party has become non-ideological—I think I would say Xi, Wang Huning, et al. are ideologues who are intensely pragmatic. Maybe that’s the same thing, though.
Regardless, there’s a lot of good information here. Lin is interested in making sure China works for the people, not in subordinating it further to capital, and I'll look here if I ever need to read a fair but critical analysis of modern Chinese policy. She’s consistent, honest about what she thinks ought to be done, and in conversation with plenty of great thinkers. She’s got me more interested in reading Wang Hui and made me feel bad about not having read Gramsci. But she also made me want to read Isabella Weber on China and neoliberalism to see if I can get a clearer picture of the relationship than I got here.
April 11, 2022
this text is one of the most rigorous and well-reserched works on the subject of how reform in the post-Deng years has transformed/degraded the socialist project. I'll leave lengthy reviews to the professors and grad students, but it's a worthy intervention into Chinese history, and I highly recommend it. I don't know if Chun considers herself part of the New Left, but this makes it feel as if that group has some blood left in it yet.
October 22, 2025
couldn't finish, which is rare for me. Interesting theses, but poorly argued. Often hard to detect if there's a consistent analytical approach, so argumentation often feels like it devolves into using whatever is at hand.
December 27, 2025
In Revolution and Counter Revolution, Lin Chun examines the trajectory of China over the last 100+ years. The Communist Revolution of 1949 completely reshaped social relations and catapulted China into position as one of the chief protagonists of the 20th century. Recent reforms have moved the country toward capitalism and global integration.
Socialism in China is often associated with famine during the Great Leap Forward. Lin places this in historical context. Unlike the USSR, agricultural collectivization in China was more voluntarist and avoided the brutal proletarianization that Russian peasants endured. She argues that the GLF was meant to decentralize and democratize agriculture, but production targets were unrealistic and untethered from previously successful forms of government management. Even though death tolls are often exaggerated, there's no denying the immense human toll it took.
Lin defends China's revolutionary history: It doubled life expectancy, improved literacy and women's rights, created the preconditions for industrialization, and gave China control of its own destiny.
Starting in the 70s the CCP pushed things in a different direction by privatizing State Owned Enterprises, laying off tens of millions of workers. They changed the rules of public ownership of land to allow for sub leasing to agribusinesses. Since the shift to a capitalist economy, labor rights are frequently ignored and abuses are rampant. China now has terrible inequality, rivaling the US. Patriarchy and Han ethnocentrism have become increasingly noxious.
She argues that China has avoided many of the pitfalls of other countries and has in some ways benefited from increased liberalization, but the corruption, inequality, consumerism, and precarious migrant labor cannot be ignored. The primary reason there has not been a stronger revolt against these changes is that the CCP retains significant legitimacy due to its revolutionary history. But as China becomes a more serious capitalist rival of the US, there will be more attempts to stop it. Lin argues that only a return to socialism will allow China to continue improving human welfare while preserving its autonomy.
This is my first time reading about Chinese history and I would've benefited from a more basic summary. I can't comment on the author's descriptions of the GLF and Cultural Revolution, but it seems fair at first blush.
Socialism in China is often associated with famine during the Great Leap Forward. Lin places this in historical context. Unlike the USSR, agricultural collectivization in China was more voluntarist and avoided the brutal proletarianization that Russian peasants endured. She argues that the GLF was meant to decentralize and democratize agriculture, but production targets were unrealistic and untethered from previously successful forms of government management. Even though death tolls are often exaggerated, there's no denying the immense human toll it took.
Lin defends China's revolutionary history: It doubled life expectancy, improved literacy and women's rights, created the preconditions for industrialization, and gave China control of its own destiny.
Starting in the 70s the CCP pushed things in a different direction by privatizing State Owned Enterprises, laying off tens of millions of workers. They changed the rules of public ownership of land to allow for sub leasing to agribusinesses. Since the shift to a capitalist economy, labor rights are frequently ignored and abuses are rampant. China now has terrible inequality, rivaling the US. Patriarchy and Han ethnocentrism have become increasingly noxious.
She argues that China has avoided many of the pitfalls of other countries and has in some ways benefited from increased liberalization, but the corruption, inequality, consumerism, and precarious migrant labor cannot be ignored. The primary reason there has not been a stronger revolt against these changes is that the CCP retains significant legitimacy due to its revolutionary history. But as China becomes a more serious capitalist rival of the US, there will be more attempts to stop it. Lin argues that only a return to socialism will allow China to continue improving human welfare while preserving its autonomy.
This is my first time reading about Chinese history and I would've benefited from a more basic summary. I can't comment on the author's descriptions of the GLF and Cultural Revolution, but it seems fair at first blush.
April 4, 2026
It's a mixed bag overall but lots to recommend lots of interesting facts and figures.An often interesting counter-narrative to conventional liberal and cold-war critiques of China's bureaucratic state with all its communist shibboleiths and the left critiques of the degeneration of communists into family and business and bureaucratic cliques jettisoning all socialism.
Lin Chun attempts her structural analysis theorising many changes in China as indicative of it becoming a neoliberal state imposing a destructive capitalism and eradicating revolutionary residues since the end of the socialist phase with Deng's and subsequent reforms. Lin Chun, though, has not given up completely on the hope of internal reform of the CCP, seeing potential in remaining cadres to develop a new mass line and reorientate life away from blind growth. She never convincingly explains how this might happen.In the absence of visible politics, beyond the platitudes of occasional thoughts from a great leader, the politics in the book sometimes sounded confused and incoherent when confronted with the state's monolithicism. The disorganized hyper-exploited working class and a relatively popular government suggest we're some way away from the time when China turns again to socialism. Worth the effort.
Lin Chun attempts her structural analysis theorising many changes in China as indicative of it becoming a neoliberal state imposing a destructive capitalism and eradicating revolutionary residues since the end of the socialist phase with Deng's and subsequent reforms. Lin Chun, though, has not given up completely on the hope of internal reform of the CCP, seeing potential in remaining cadres to develop a new mass line and reorientate life away from blind growth. She never convincingly explains how this might happen.In the absence of visible politics, beyond the platitudes of occasional thoughts from a great leader, the politics in the book sometimes sounded confused and incoherent when confronted with the state's monolithicism. The disorganized hyper-exploited working class and a relatively popular government suggest we're some way away from the time when China turns again to socialism. Worth the effort.
October 8, 2024
Charts the shift from amaoist to post-Mao reformist approaches in different spheres of Chinese politics, economy and society. Thorough analysis of shifting policy on land tenure structures, foreign policy, market regulation, internal migration etc.
Takes a while to get into as quite dense and assumes more knowledge of Chinese political debates than I have but is extremely thorough and fascinating.
Takes a while to get into as quite dense and assumes more knowledge of Chinese political debates than I have but is extremely thorough and fascinating.
December 11, 2022
Great primer on the neo-liberalization of China and what might befall the nation in the coming years. I'm not a scholar on China but I was still able to digest the denser content with a little extra reading. Definitely suggest reading footnote samples!
April 4, 2026
Really dense read, but interesting deep dives on CCP thought and history. Touched briefly on the modern CCP at the end
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews