China: The Benefits of Persecution?
edited by Ou Nianzhong and Liang Yongkang, and translated from the Chinese by Laura Maynard Merwin Asia, 364 pp. During decades of reading and reviewing books on China I have learned a great deal, even from those I didn’t like. Only a few have surprised me. Mao’s Lost Children is such a book, and those like me who believe that the Mao period was bad for China and the Chinese will also be surprised—although, as I note below, some of the surprise is negative. It starts with the cover, which shows laughing girls being drawn on an oxcart. Since I supposed that young middle school graduates...