Drawing on hundreds of interviews with top Chinese officials, parliamentarians, scholars, and businessmen, Willy Lam, a renowned journalist and writer on Chinese affairs, presents a first-hand, multi-dimensional account of twenty-first century China and the impact of fourth generation leaders, including President Hu Jinato and Premier Wen Jiabao. Lam goes behind the glitzy facade of nouveau-riche Beijing and Shanghai to examine how the Hu leadership has tried to extend the Communist Party's "mandate of heaven" by tackling an array of daunting problems: the weakening legitimacy of the Party's...

Renowned for his coverage of China's elite politics and leadership transitions, veteran Sinologist Willy Lam has produced the first book-length study in English of the rise of Xi Jinping--General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since November 2012. With rare insight, Lam describes Xi's personal history and his fascination with quasi-Maoist values, the factional politics through which he ascended, the configuration of power of the Fifth-Generation leadership, and the country's likely future directions under the charismatic "princeling."

Despite an undistinguished...