The Penguin History of Modern China

The Penguin History of Modern China

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 29 June, 2008, 12:00am

UPDATED : Sunday, 29 June, 2008, 12:00am

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by Jonathan Fenby

Allen Lane, HK$480

She was 17 and had been heard to remark that American-made shoe polish was really good. But this was in China in 1957 and Mao Zedong had deemed it politically expedient to put an end to the Hundred Flowers campaign, which had initially invited criticism of the Communist Party. Deng Xiaoping was charged with purging the 'rightists' - 'squeezing the pus from the abscess'.

The nameless teenaged shoe-shiner was one of an estimated 400,000 'intellectuals' targeted and she was deported to a labour camp in Manchuria.

Jonathan Fenby does not record this hapless girl's fate, but her plight is symptomatic of the apocalypse that overtook the mainland for much of the 20th century. This single example is also characteristic of his history of modern China, which places the key events of the past century and a half into a broad, flowing narrative that is at once gripping and illuminating, yet is spiced with anecdotes and sketches that bring the book to life and raise some interesting questions.

Does Hu Jintao ever ponder the year he spent carrying bricks during the Cultural Revolution, when he was sent to Guizhou to 'learn from the masses'? Were Big Ears Du, boss of Shanghai's infamous Green Gang, and the Shandong Warlord known as The Dog Meat General, proud of their nicknames, or slightly bashful? Is there any record at Time's New York offices of Henry Luce burying Teddy White's epic report on the 1943 famine in Henan to mollify Madam Chiang Kai-shek, the imperious wife of the Nationalist leader? And how long did it take Deng Xiaoping to munch his way through the box of croissants - a favourite food from student days - he had delivered to his plane when it stopped over in Paris in 1974?

Chief of the many qualities of Fenby's magisterial chronicle is the veteran newspaperman's grasp of the idea that history is not simply about party plenums, trade alliances and decisive battles, but that it directly concerns the humble officials, workers and soldiers at the cutting edge of events. As Fenby remarks: 'No country on Earth has suffered a more bitter history in recent times': tens of millions of Chinese perished, from famine, starvation, war, torture - even being buried alive.

Starting in 1850, Fenby works his way through the various cataclysms that befell the country, covering the end of imperial days, the dawn of the republic, the Japanese invasion and the dark years under Mao, to the country's astonishing renaissance in the past three decades. There is nothing startlingly new here, but Fenby compiles a concise and adept summary, moving the tale swiftly forward with occasional interpolations.

Fenby points out that many of China's troubles have been of its own devising and concludes with a brief overview of the People's Republic as it struggles to stage its first Olympic Games. Although stuck in a time warp that can be traced back two millennia, its impact is changing the world; but the country as a whole remains unfathomable and its leaders grapple with hitherto unknown problems. The recent economic revolution may have been the easy part, Fenby writes, adding: 'transforming this into a long-term, viable social and political system is likely to prove much tougher'.

Asked his opinion of the effects of the French Revolution of 1789, Zhou Enlai famously replied that it was too early to tell. In a similar vein, the passage of even a few years may produce a different slant on China's modern history. But for the moment, Fenby's version is without parallel.