This volume illuminates the relationship of China's radical past to its reformist present as China makes a way forward through very differently conceived and contested visions of the future. In the context of early twenty-first century problems and the failures of global capitalism, is China's history of revolutionary socialism an aberration that is soon to be forgotten, or can it serve as a resource for creating a more fully human and radically democratic China with implications for all of us? Ranging from the early years of China's revolutionary twentieth-century to the present, the essays collected here look at the past and present of China with a view toward better understanding the ideas, ideals, and people who have dared to imagine radical transformation of their worlds and to assess the conceptual, political, and social limitations of these visions and their implementations.

Catherine Lynch is Emeritus in the History Department, Eastern Connecticut State University, and Research Fellow in the Institute of Modern Chinese Thought and Culture at East China Normal University in Shanghai, China.

Robert B. Marks is the Richard and Billie Deihl Professor of History at Whittier College.

Paul G. Pickowicz is Distinguished Professor of History and Chinese Studies and holder of the Endowed Chair in Modern Chinese History at the University of California, San Diego.