Tracking the real people's republic

For anyone trying to understand China behind the headlines and the propaganda, Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China is an important read.

- GUNJAN SINGH

It provides a people's perspective of how Chinese society has evolved since economic reform and the manner in which the policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have impacted Chinese women in particular. The book is an attempt to present the story and idea of China beyond the CCP and through the lens of the Chinese people.

The word revolution is also aptly used in the title underscoring how the word can mean different things to different sections of society and the Party. According to the author, "This book is about revolutions in two senses. It is about China's economic revolution from the 1980s and 1990s onwards, after the Reform and Opening Up era... It is also about the personal revolutions undertaken by four young women born in those decades as they came of age amid the inconsistent rise — and now stumble — of social mobility in China's capitalist era."

Women pay the highest price in any revolution and China is no different. Though Mao Zedong did famously proclaim, "Women hold up half the sky", Chinese society does not reflect this outlook in any meaningful way. China is inherently patriarchal; for proof, one need look no further than the gender composition of the Chinese Politburo Standing Committee.