I've seen him get called a genocide denier over this a couple of times but like... you're allowed to be wrong in an actively unfolding academic debate about historical events in recent memory, especially when the evidence was still being uncovered. Was every single person in the 90s and early 2000s supposed to be on the same page so suddenly after the civil war and intervention, as if the academic consensus came from Heaven and all the Good People agreed with it instantly, and anyone who disagreed is a Bad Person?

Poeple calling him like this didn't even read that book, he never denied the genocide, he pointed out it's not just all Serbs like western propaganda claimed and that the west and their darling paragons of democracy like Izetbegović or Tudman have been responsible for war in the first place.

Imagine invalidating vibes based analysis in this day and age

Where specifically?

Well and the reforms did in fact lead to a lot of corruption and liberals entering the halls of power. Xi really did a good job keeping the parts that worked, and reversing the parts that didn’t. He’s still struggling with cleaning up liberal corruption to this day. The good thing was maintaining the dominance of the party through the reforms, so that once an ideologically minded administration got in, they could use that dominance to ensure adherence to the principles of the nation.

Can't blame Parenti for that since the CPC was under the leadership of the Shanghai clique.

Well yea, re-istening to Black Shirts and Reds he made some comment about China, but I did remind myself it was 1998 when he wrote that.