SOURCE: Mendelsohn, Andrew. “Deng's Big Bang.” New Republic 198, no. 14 (4 April 1988): 15-17.

In the following essay, Mendelsohn discusses the popularity of The Third Wave in China and assesses its impact on Chinese politics and politicians.

In 1983 it looked as if China's Politburo would adopt something out of American pop culture as a new ideology. Confucius, Marx, and Mao bowed out. Alvin Toffler moved in. When the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences invited the “future shock” sociologist to lecture on his American best seller The Third Wave, audiences in Beijing and Shanghai listened to him as if he were an oracle. Premier Zhao Ziyang had the book translated for a restricted readership. When some hard-liners attacked and suppressed it as “spiritual pollution,” Zhao called a meeting of 100 prominent scientists and Party leaders to resolve the issue. The book won. The Third Wave soon became the best-selling book in China, after...