Drawing on hundreds of previously unseen archival documents, award-winning historian Frank Dikoetter recasts our understanding of an era that both the regime and foreign admirers alike celebrate as an economic miracle.

In a fascinating tale spanning five decades, he examines the country's economic transformation alongside the regime's determined suppression of dissent, its increasing hostility towards the West and its development into a thoroughly entrenched dictatorship led by Xi Jinping - one equipped with a sprawling security apparatus and the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world. 'Essential reading for anyone who wants to know what has shaped today's China and what the Chinese Communist Party's choices mean for the rest of the world' New Statesman'A blow-by-blow account of the uneven, reactive and sometimes chaotic course of economic policies . . . An important corrective' Financial Times'Dikoetter has been mining Chinese primary sources for decades . . . A clear-eyed and detailed account' Observer