Description

Ist U.S. edition. 527 pp, large 8vo (9 7/16" H), hard cover in dust jacket. Map endpapers, b&w photos. "For half a century, Kang Sheng was master of the shadow kingdom that is 'Tewu', the Chinese Secret Service.(his) story necessarily broadens into a history of the Chinese Secret Service, from its inception in Shanghai in the 1920's to the current age of industrial espionage and terrorism. On the large scale, the subject of this book is the shaping of modern China. The break in Sino-Soviet relations was Kang Sheng's work, in large part, and his Orwellian Campaign of Rectification foreshadowed the unparalleled slaughter of the Great Leap Forward in the 1950's. examine(s) the struggle for power between Mao and Chiang Kai-shek, the vast system of Maoist 'Laogai' (prison camps), the development of the Chinese atom bomb, and, in general, the undercurrent of violence in Chinese history, which surfaced most recently in the Tienanmen Square massacre."