Inside the neo-Maoist movement in China

China’s New Red Guards: The Return of Radicalism and the Rebirth of Mao Zedong. By Jude D. Blanchette. Oxford University Press; 224 pages; $27.95

ONE OF the most important essays written by Mao Zedong was also one of his more turgid, a work published in 1937 entitled “On Contradictions”. Even the most casual observer of modern China can see that a contradiction festers at the heart of Chinese politics: how can this consumerist, mercantilist economic superpower—with its stockmarkets, property bubbles and flamboyant billionaires—be ruled by a party that calls itself Communist, insists it practices socialism and crushes any attempt by workers or peasants to assert their rights?