The SAGE Handbook of Contemporary China

This transnational compilation of social science scholarship offers an accessible and impressively comprehensive entrée to understanding core topics in the study of contemporary China. Thoughtfully organized, this timely volume showcases a mix of senior and emerging researchers with empirical and analytical expertise in their respective sub-fields.  Both specialists and students will learn much from this handbook.

Weiping Wu and Mark Frazier, two of the best China specialists of their generation, have assembled an international group of first-rate scholars to analyze some of the most important issues in the understanding of China, including the emergence of the modern state, China’s current political system, its economic transformation, and its expanding role in the world.  Of particular interest is an innovative group of chapters on Chinese identities, including the identities of Han Chinese on the mainland, China’s ethnic and sexual minorities, Hong Kongers, Taiwanese, and Chinese outside China, and a set of chapters on migration, urbanization, stratification, aging, family life, and other dimensions of social change. The editors’ thoughtful introduction identifies other key issues in the study of contemporary China, and calls for greater use of interdisciplinary, comparative, and transnational approaches to address these and other key issues in the study of contemporary China, as well as attention to concepts and conclusions being produced by China’s own social scientists. This is an invaluable reference for any serious observer of today’s China.