ABSTRACT
Until the 1980s, the Party historiography produced in the PRC did not attract the serious attention of scholars in the West, who regarded it as stereotyped, monotonous and propagandistic. After Mao Zedong's death in 1976, this negative image quickly changed. Since 1979 Party historiography increasingly has become accepted as a serious contribution to the study of recent history by readers abroad as well as in China.
