An eye-opening investigation into China's Communist Party and its integral role in the country's rise as a global superpower and rival of the United States.

Tells the story of China's political elites from their own perspectives. Based on over five hundred interviews, this title offers a rare glimpse into how the attitudes and ideas of those at the top have evolved over the decades.

"Through decades of direct experience of the People's Republic combined with extraordinary access to hundreds of hitherto unseen documents in communist party archives, the author of The People's Trilogy offers a riveting account of China's rise from the disaster of the Cultural Revolution. He takes us inside the country's unprecedented four-decade economic transformation--from rural villages to industrial metropoles and elite party conclaves--that...

"When Deng Xiaoping launched his economic reforms in the late 1970s, he vowed to build "socialism with Chinese characteristics." Three and half decades later, behind its rapid growth and glitzy façade, modernization under one-party rule has spawned a form of rapacious crony capitalism characterized by endemic corruption, an incipient kleptocracy, record income inequality, and high social tensions. This book traces the origin of China's crony capitalism...