Includes bibliographical references (pages 297-374) and index.

1. From one dictator to another (1976-1979) -- 2. Retrenchment (1979-1982) -- 3. Reform (1982-1984) -- 4. Of people and prices (1984-1988) -- 5. The massacre (1989) -- 6. Watershed (1989-1991) -- 7. Capitalist tools in socialist hands (1992-1996) -- 8. Big is beautiful (1997-2001) -- 9. Going global (2001-2008) -- 10. Hubris (2008-2012) -- Epilogue.

How did the People's Republic of China transform from a backwater economy in the 1970s into the world superpower of today? Drawing on hundreds of previously unseen archival documents, award-winning historian Frank Dikötter recasts our understanding of an era that both the regime and foreign admirers alike celebrate as an economic miracle. In a fascinating tale spanning five decades, he examines the country's economic transformation alongside the regime's determined suppression of dissent, its increasing hostility towards the West and its development into a thoroughly entrenched dictatorship led by Xi Jinping -- one equipped with a sprawling security apparatus and the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world. -- Back cover.