Bringing a new dimension to the study of citizenship, Chinese Citizenship examines how individuals at the margins of Chinese society deal with state efforts to transform them into model citizens in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Based on extensive original research, the authors argue that social and cultural citizenship has a greater impact on people's lives than legal, civil and political citizenship. The seven case studies present intimate portraits of the conflicted identities of peasants, criminals, ethnic minorities, the urban poor, rural migrant children in the...