Eric Li, “Party Life: Chinese Governance And The World Beyond Liberalism”

In 2023, the book “Party Life: Chinese Governance And The World Beyond Liberalism” by Eric Li was published. This does provide some good details of the functioning and structure of the Chinese Party-state, but there is a lot of Chaff that has to be waded through to find the Wheat. During the years of the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976), the Chinese economy grew at the three decadal average of 6.7% - hardly the disaster that the author identifies it as. For example, at PPP the Chinese economy was 18.8% the size of the US economy in 1990; not the 6.1% stated by the author on page 91. In contrast to these political traditions:In today’s China, political power is not divided between centres of power but is centralized under a single political authority.