Unending Capitalism

Karl Gerth is Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego, where he holds the Hwei-Chih and Julia Hsiu Chair in Chinese Studies. His earlier books are As China Goes, So Goes the World (2010) and China Made: Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation (2003).

• Introduction: consumerism and capitalism; 1. Self-expanding and compulsory consumerism; 2. Building state capitalism across 1949; 3. Soviet influences on state consumerism; 4. State consumerism in advertising, posters, and films; 5. State consumerism in the service sector; 6. Consumerism in the cultural revolution; 7. The Mao badge phenomenon as consumer fad; Afterword; Bibliography; Index.

'A brilliantly researched and analysed account of consumerism during the Mao era. It richly documents the survival of consumer impulses and behaviour amid the puritanical ideology of the early People's Republic. This is a crucial book for understanding the social, economic and political history of the Mao era, and the tensions and tragedies resulting from the Communist Party's state capitalism.' Julia Lovell, author of Maoism: A Global History