Faced with the usual list of paradoxes that plague our views of China: it is a communist regime with a capitalist economy; an authoritarian state with an entrepreneurial spirit; a unified nation with tendencies toward fragmentation, the contributions to this volume work to go beyond them and to seek new paths to understanding China. To do so, the essays avoid the conventional approaches toward Chinese politics that focus on either evolutionist (culturally bound) or functionalist (role bound) issues. Rather than separate state from society, these essays explore how the interweaving of these...

Jean-Louis Rocca's admirably concise A Sociology of Modern China wears its scholarship lightly and paints an intimate and complex portrait of Chinese society, all the while avoiding cliches and simplifications. He delves into China's history and examines the country's many different social strata so as to better understand the enormous challenges and opportunities with which its people are confronted.
After discussing the long march toward reform and the crises along the way - among them the 1989 protests which culminated in the events in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere - Rocca dedicates...