China has always been something of a mystery to Westerners. For one generation, Mao Zedong and his followers were simple "agrarian reformers, " while for another they were the "communist emperor and his blue ants." In the 1970s, some of the finest Sinologists believed there was much the United States could learn from Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution with regard to bureaucracy, criminal justice. health care, and mass education. By the 1980s, those same theorists asserted that Maoism was nothing more than a feudal fascism and had absolutely nothing positive to teach. Marxism, China. and Development provides a plausible explanation of these developments that have had such a powerful effect on the people of China for the past half century.