" After a rich crop of journalistic treatments of China' s dizzying changes in the 1980s and 1990s, publication of longer term economic, sociological, and historical analyses of the post-Mao period is now gathering momentum. This informative book should emerge as one of the most important of these efforts. Addressing a wide array of contemporary themes . . . the authors have produced a solid, general-purpose volume of use to graduate students as well as specialists." -- Choice

This analytic overview of contemporary Chinese politics focuses on six major themes: agriculture, urban life and industry, law and policing, intellectuals, women and the family, and minority nationalities.