'This book is by far the best treatment of trends within the Chinese political economy since 2008. Looking through many functional lenses (business, politics, law, trade, administration, and others), it documents a trend of 'the state advancing and private people retreating' (guojin mintui) that has reversed an opposite trend during earlier eras of reform in China. Most readers in the West do not yet know what a sharp change this has been. This is the book that will tell them.'
Lynn White, professor of Politics and International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University