12/4/21

According to the introduction this collection of writings prepares the ground for making sense of Chinese political phenomena in terms meaningful to modern social science. I do not think it really comes close to achieving that goal. The contributions are well-written pieces, but they deal with disparate topics and events that are hundreds of years, if not millennia, apart. I liked the essays on the examination system and the relationship between chinese religion and confucianism, but the others were too heavy on uninteresting detail. So as usual for multi-author books, there were not any particularly great insights to be found in this one.