China Reconstructs includes ten articles that investigate the reconstruction of modern China and provide different dimensions to the vibrant and multifaceted history of the country. The book discusses how prominent individuals, political parties, and ordinary people alike looked for ways to "reconstruct China" in a period of great political upheavals.

This book is about how Yan Fu introduced the Chinese intellectual world to the liberalism of John Stuart Mill by partly grasping Mill's ideas, partly misunderstanding and projecting onto them indegenous Chinese values, and partly criticizing or resisting them. Rather than bending Western liberalism to the purposes of Chinese nationalism. Yan initiated a distinctively Chinese liberal tradition that became a major strand of China's modern political culture.