| Abstrakt: |
Abstract: The article provides critical review of the new general history of the People´s Republic of China recently published in Prague. It focuses on methodological naiveté of the authors who claim to bring new perspective on recent Chinese history, while they neglect recent scholarship, and indiscriminately use standard academic publication side by side with official party sanctioned histories, or former Soviet histories from the time of Sino-Soviet split, without considering a possible politically and ideologically motivated bias. The review also observes avoidance of crucial topics, such as the institutions of the Communist party, the disciplinary role of the re-education campaigns in early PRC, or the centrality of demands for political reform at certain points in PRC history. Insufficient precision in presentation of some basic historical facts makes the book under review not only methodologically immature and tendentious, but also unreliable as a source of data. It is surprising how such a poorly written book could receive support from a prestigious research grant and pass the scrutiny of the reviewers. |
