A Guide to Mao's China

Name: A Guide to Mao's China
Price: 87.99 AUD
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ISBN: 9781501785900

Showing the Nation to Foreign Guests

Gavin Healy

$87.99

Paperback

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English

Cornell University Press
15 June 2026

Asian history; Diplomacy; Tourism industry; Hospitality industry

Series: Histories and Cultures of Tourism

A Guide to Mao's China explores how personnel within China's state tourism bureaucracy during the Mao era struggled to balance inbound foreign tourism as a form of political, historical, and cultural representation with demands for developing a revenue-generating service industry in a socialist economy. The People's Republic crafted its national narrative through tightly managed tours, and foreign visitors were led through model communes and factories by officials, guides, and service workers still negotiating what tourism meant within a socialist state.

Drawing on government archives, service worker manuals, firsthand tourist reports, and rare ephemera, Gavin Healy offers a human face to people-to-people diplomacy and shows how tourism workers shaped foreign impressions of Chinese socialism, while grappling with its meaning themselves. A Guide to Mao's China offers a fresh view of Mao-era China as more globally engaged and performative than often remembered.

By: Gavin Healy
Imprint: Cornell University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781501785900
ISBN 10: 1501785907
Series: Histories and Cultures of Tourism
Pages: 318
Publication Date: 15 June 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Gavin Healy is Lecturer in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University and Center Associate at the University of Michigan's Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies.