http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/2007/11/20#china-today Dissidence (esp. the role of scientists), arts and letters (esp. poetry), commercial and economic explosion, youth culture, popular culture... <ul>Recommended: <li>Fang Lizhi, <cite>Bringing Down the Great Wall</cite> <li>H. Lyman Miller, <cite>Science and Dissent in Post-Mao China: The Politics of Knowledge</cite> [Observe the heresy of making the title more informative than the subtitle] <li>Kalpana Misra, <cite>From Post-Maoism to Post-Marxism: The Erosion of Offical Ideology in Deng's China</cite> <li>Jianying Zha, <cite>China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture</cite> </ul> <ul>To read: <li>Nimrod Baranovitch, <cite>China's New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender, and Politics, 1978-1997</cite> <li>Timothy Brook, <cite>Quelling the People</cite> <li>Ian Buruma, <cite>Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing</cite> <li>Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao, <cite>Will the Boat Sink the Water? The Life of China's Peasants</cite> <li>Ci Jiwei, <cite>Dialectic of the Chinese Revolution: From Utopianism to Hedonism</cite> <li>Gloria Davies, <cite>Worrying about China: The Language of Chinese Critical Inquiry</cite> [<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/DAVWOC.html">Blurb</a>] <li>James Farrer, <cite>Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai</cite> [<a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/14771.ctl">Blurb</a>] <li>Robert C. Feenstra and Gordon H. Hanson, "Ownership and Control in Outsourcing to China: Estimating the Property-Rights Theory of the Firm", <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/0033553053970188"><cite>The Quarterly Journal of Economics</cite> <strong>120</strong> (2005): 729--761</a> <li>Mary Elizabeth Gallagher, <cite>Contagious Capitalism: Globalization and the Politics of Labor in China</cite> [<a href="http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/7965.html">Blurb, ch. 1</a>] <li>Dru C. Gladney, <cite>Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People's Republic</cite> <li>Peter Hays Gries, <cite>China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics and Diplomacy</cite> [<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9662.html">Blurb and introduction</a>; favorable <a href="http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=174">review</a> in <cite>Dissent</cite>] <li>Doug Guthrie, <cite>Dragon in a Three-Piece Suit: The Emergence of Capitalism in China</cite> <li>Hooper, <cite>Youth in China</cite> <li>Charlotte Ikels, <cite>The Return of the God of Wealth: The Transition to a Market Economy in Urban China</cite> <li>Ian Johnson, <cite>Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China</cite> <li>Ching Kwan Lee, <cite>Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt</cite> [<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9609.html">blurb</a>] <li>Yi-min Lin, <cite>Between Politics and Markets: Firms, Competition, and Institutional Change in Post-Mao China</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/0521604044">Blurb</a>] <li>Perry Link, <cite>Evening Chats in Beijing: Probing China's Predicament</cite> <li>Barry Naughton, <citE>The Chinese economy: Transitions and Growth</cite> [<a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/0-262-64064-3">Blurb</a>] <li>Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, <cite>Rightful Resistance in Rural China</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/0521678528">Blurb</a>] <li>Minxin Pei, <cite>China's TRapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy</cite> [<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/PEICHI.html">Blurb</a>] <li>Chaohua Wang (ed.), <cite>One China, Many Paths</cite> [2005 essay collection] <li>Wang Hui, <cite>China's New Order: Society, Politics, and Economy in Transition</cite> [<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/WANCHN.html">Blurb</a>] <li>Andrew Wederman, <cite> From Mao to Market: Rent Seeking, Local Protectionism, and Marketization in China</cite> <li>Hongda "Harry" Wu, <cite>Laogai: The Chinese Gulag</cite> <li>Wu Hung, <cite>Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square and the Creation of a Political Space</cite> [<a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/153722.ctl">Blurb</a>] <li>Li Zhang, <cite>Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks Within China's Floating Population</cite> </ul>