Of this book, Simone de Beauvoir said, 'I have tried to evaluate all the knowledge gained at first-hand, by actually seeing places and talking with people, in terms of China's past and in the perspective of the changes to come in the future. Only when one grasps its future does this country become clear - neither a paradise nor an infernal ant hill, but a very real part of the world where people who have just broken the chains of a hopeless cycle of an animal existence are fighting hard to build a human world.'