This work investigates the discrepancy between the official state-sanctioned image of the People's Republic of China and the lived reality of its citizens during the Cultural Revolution. Simon Leys, a scholar and sinologist, utilizes his observations from a six-month residency in 1972 to dismantle the propaganda narratives prevalent in Western intellectual circles at the time. He argues that the political structures of the era functioned as a mechanism of total social control rather than a utopian social experiment.

Critics and scholars often cite this book as a seminal piece of investigative reporting that challenged the prevailing Western academic consensus on Maoist China. Readers frequently note the sharp, polemical nature of the prose and its significance in documenting the realities of a closed society.