Maurice Meisner

Harvey Goldberg Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Died 2012

Publication: Mao's China and After, third edition 1999
Proof: Open the work ↗Link checked 2026-10-04
Method: Synthesis and intellectual history, not archival demography.
Affiliations and stated position: His colleague Edward Friedman records the charge that his approach seemed to some too kind to the Mao era and too mean-spirited to the Deng era. That charge is reported as circulating and could not be attached to a named critic in a named publication.
Criticism: No specific named citable critique found.

Where we use it

1Data story · great famine15 to 30 million deaddeaths
2Essay note 3Workplace denunciation quotas during the 1957 Anti-Rightist Rectification Campaign.
3Essay note 2CCP Eleventh Central Committee Sixth Plenum, Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China, 27 June 1981.
4Essay note 1Enlarged Politburo Conference at Beidaihe (17-30 August 1958), Communique calling for 10.7 million tons of steel in 1958.
5Essay note 4Peng Dehuai, Letter of Opinion to Chairman Mao at the Lushan Conference, 14 July 1959, on the waste of the mass steel-making campaign.
6Essay note 1Liu Xinwu, 'The Class Counselor' (《班主任》), People's Literature, November 1977; Lu Xinhua, 'The Scar' (《伤痕》), Wenhui Daily, 11 August 1978.
7Essay note 2Bei Dao and Mang Ke (eds.), Today (《今天》) Issue No. 1, mimeographed and posted on Xidan Democracy Wall, Beijing, 23 December 1978.