New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution

The most important contribution of the volume is to show that the old explanations of the CCP's success - peasant support, organizational strength, the supply of administrative services - are incomplete and do not account for the diverse and heterogeneous nature of the CCP and the great difficulties it had in building up mass support. This volume makes clear that the question of the CCP's success remains one of the most elusive but also most important that historians of China face today.