In a work of substantive breadth, theoretical depth, rich empirical detail, and provocative analysis, Chinese Canadian scholar Yuezhi Zhao provides one observation that, for this reviewer, stands out as particularly insightful, important, and applicable across the disciplinary perspectives from which scholars study contemporary China.
The point, simply put, is that mainland China's socialist legacy has enduring implications, both philosophical and practical, for human attitudes and actions unfolding in the postsocialist period. More specifically, China's twentieth-century history of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist revolution and socialist inculcation and experimentation ensures that market-driven development in the twenty-first century will not unfold without significant challenges from both concerned elites and disenfranchised groups.
As Zhao sees it, as the benefits and costs of economic growth have spread differentially across different strata of China's citizenry, enriching and empowering some while marginalizing others, the resulting contradictions and dislocations are “subjectively experienced by a population that has been educated...