William L. Parish – författare

After 1949 the Chinese Communists carried out land reform, the collectivization of agriculture, and the formation of people's communes. The new economic and political organizations that emerged have made peasant life more comfortable and secure, but many economic and status differentials and traditional customs remain resistant to change. Focusing on rural Kwangtung province, William L. Parish and Martin King Whyte examine the rural work-incentive system, village equality and inequality, rural health care and education, marriage customs, and the position of women, among other topics, to determine what and how much of the traditional Chinese ways of life is left in Communist China.

Through interviews with city residents, Martin King Whyte and William L. Parish provide a unique survey of urban life in the last decade of Mao Zedong's rule. They conclude that changes in society produced under communism were truly revolutionary and that, in the decade under scrutiny, the Chinese avoided ostensibly universal evils of urbanism with considerable success. At the same time, however, they find that this successful effort spawned new and equally serious urban problems—bureaucratic rigidity, low production, and more.

This book provides a rare glimpse into how the Chinese urban population is experiencing the rapid shift from a planned to a market economy. The authors, using a dozen recent national social surveys, give voice to workers, civil servants, intellectuals, and women, who report their grievances and joys at home, at work, and in the public sphere. With fresh data on newly emerging patterns of economic inequality, labor-management relations, popular grievances, political participation, and gender inequality, the book comprehensively analyzes how the shifting social contract influences ordinary people's lives. With comparative data from the more market-based Taiwan, the book illuminates the directions in which China might be headed.

This text examines the Pacific War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, from the perspective of those who fought the wars and lived through them. The relationship between history and memory informs the book, and each war is relocated in the historical and cultural experiences of Asian countries.