In the Lap of Tigers: The Communist Labor University of Jiangxi Province

A well-written book. * The China Journal * The book is engagingly written. * Labor History * This book can help readers understand Chinese politics or education before 1980. * History of Education Quarterly * Specialists on Chinese education and on modern China more generally will welcome this volume for the new insights and understandings it contributes to the study of Chinese socialist development, and the role of higher education within that development. Comparative educators will find it fills important gaps in knowledge within the wider historical project of socialist higher eduction development. * Comparative Education * Cleverley's treatment of the history of the Communist Labour University is detailed, effective and quite readable. * Pacific Affairs * Cleverley's book is a model of educational history. With a deep and surefooted understanding of his subject he takes the reader lucidly and impartially through the permeations of power and ideology. -- Richard Davis, University of Tasmania * History Of Education Review * Offers an interesting glimpse into attempts to translate revolutionary ideology into meaningful, pragmatic, and mass-based educational actualization. As such, the Gongda story, as narrated in this volume, merits attention as a daring and even noble facet of twentieth-century Chinese societal transformation. * The Historian *

Founded in the remote mountains of ChinaOs Jiangxi Province in 1958, the Communist Labor University introduced uneducated laborers to basic agricultural science and farming techniques through an innovative work-study program until 1980. Drawing on a wealth of archival materials, John Cleverley explores the inner workings of this unique institution and the personal involvement of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Deng Xiaoping. Illuminating the internal and external politics of a remarkable social experiment from both an institutional and personal perspective, the book underscores the larger issues of educational reform and political change in China.