China’s Capitalist Transformation: The Rhetoric That Mattered

This book provides a rare account of China’s market transformation in the own words of the Chinese: politicians, intellectuals, the media, and journalists. The Chinese rhetoric-complex, ironic, argumentative, and abstruse-may hold the key to understanding China’s unique style of elite politics, state-citizen relationship, and institutional development. Rhetoricizing the Chinese transformation provides a glimpse into how the Chinese minds work as Chinese people participate as agents in the exercise of changing the country and themselves. This book will serve as a guide for anyone interested in learning how Chinese reason, persuade, debate, and resist.

Yuan Li, Associate professor at Saint Mary’s College of California, USA