Economic Transition and Political Legitimacy in Post-Mao China

“This book discusses an important topic-how economic reforms have undermined the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy-that many scholars have mentioned in passing but which no one, to my knowledge, has examined as systematically as this author. The contradiction between necessary reform and maintaining the party’s legitimacy is one of the most important aspects-possibly the single most important aspect-of contemporary Chinese politics.” - Barrett L. McCormick, Marquette University “The first serious study on the role of ideology in China’s economic reform, it adds something important to the emerging literature on the Chinese reform period.” - Zhiyuan Cui, MIT “This book is well written and persuasively argued. It makes an important contribution to the field and is likely to be adopted in a number of undergraduate courses on Chinese politics.” - Joseph Fewsmith, Boston University

Feng Chen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Upsala College.