Julia Strauss’s new book focuses on the period 1949 to 1954 and compares how the Communist Party in China and the Nationalist Party in Taiwan sought to consolidate their authority and foster economic development. Both parties emerged from a common background of Leninist party organization amid civil war and foreign invasion. However, by the mid-1950s they were on clearly different trajectories of state building and development. Strauss considers state personnel, the use of terror, and land reform to explore the evolution of these “revolutionary” and “conservative” regimes.

Professor Strauss teaches politics at SOAS, University of London where she’s been based since 1994. She’s written on twentieth-century Chinese political structures, movements, and gender and has also focused on China’s foreign ties, editing volumes such as From the Great Wall to the New World: China and Latin American in the 21st Century and China and Africa: Emerging Patterns in Globalization and Development. For a decade, Prof. Strauss edited The China Quarterly, the most widely circulated academic journal focusing on China.