How did Zhao Ziyang rise through the provincial apparatus of the Chinese Communist Party to become premier in 1980? How did he develop the policies of economic reform in the provinces that have now become national policy? What does Zhao Ziyang’s professional development indicate about upward elite mobility in the Chinese political system? These are the central questions the author addresses in this political biography, tracing Zhao Ziyang’s career in detail from his youth, through the Anti-Japanese War, the 1949 revolution, land reform, a series of political and economic campaigns during...