How China Got Rid of Opium

During my recent December-January visit to the People's Republic of China, it seemed to me that I got a more concrete idea of what the Cultural Revolution had actually meant to individual peasants, factory workers, housewives, and retired people than was conveyed by even such excellent accounts of similar visits (e.g., Inside the People's Republic, by the CCAS group; The Real China, by Ross Terrill; Daily Life in Revolutionary China, by Maria Antonietta Macciocchi) as I had read before leaving. I also felt I had heard a more specific account of the conduct of the successful drug abolition campaign carried on in 1950-1952 than had been given even in Dr. Joshua Horn's story of the medical revolution in socialist China, Away With All Pests. I think your readers may be interested in a summary report of our exploration in both these fields.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website

China · Cultural revolution · Economic history · Factory (object-oriented programming) · French horn · Media studies · Opium · People's Republic · Political science · Sociology · Health and Conflict Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · History · Law