Over recent decades China has experienced massive change and development. China is the world's fastest growing economy, and has become a global superpower once again. But this development has thrown up a number of seemingly intractable contradictions, both political and economic. In this panoramic study of Chinese history in the twentieth century and its place in the development of global capitalism, Lin Chun argues that the paradoxes of contemporary Chinese society are not simply the product of the development of capitalism or modernity in the country. They are instead the product of the contradictions of its long revolutionary history, as well as the social and political consequences of its post-socialist transition.

Published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, Revolution and Counterrevolution in China charts China's epic revolutionary trajectory in search of a socialist alternative to the global system, and asks whether market reform must repudiate and overturn the revolution and its legacy.