Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian chronicle how an impoverished and terrorized China experienced radical political changes in the long 1970s and how ordinary people broke free from the beliefs that had shaped their lives during Mao Cultural Revolution. These changes, and the unprecedented and sustained economic growth that followed, transformed China and the world.

In this rigorous account, Westad and Chen construct a panorama of catastrophe and progress in China. They chronicle China gradual opening to the world the interplay of power in an era of aged and ailing leadership, the people rebellion against the earlier government system, and the roles of unlikely characters: overseas Chinese capitalists, American engineers, Japanese professors, and German designers. This is a story of revolutionary change that neither foreigners nor the Chinese themselves could have predicted.