John P. Burns

Government Capacity and the Hong Kong Civil Service

Oxford University Press, 2004

“This book examines, in detail, the political context within which the civil service operates, including the role of the central government in Hong Kong SAR civil service policy making, the changing leadership role of Hong Kong's administrative elite, and attempts by the government to boost executive accountability since 2002.”

William A. Joseph, ed.

Politics in China: An Introduction

Oxford University Press, 2010

Sixty years ago, China was one of the poorest countries in the world, populated mostly by rural peasants, and still suffering from more than a century of internal turmoil and international humiliation. Today, China is a rapidly modernizing economic dynamo with growing global influence. Politics in China is an authoritative introduction to how this transformation occurred, and how China is governed today. The opening section provides readers with a firm grounding in China's modern political history; the next section covers the political system. The book then focuses on several major issues in China today: politics in the countryside and the cities; the arts; the environment; public health; and population policy. The final chapters cover politics in four important areas located on China's geographic periphery: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Cheng Li, editor

China's Changing Political Landscape: Prospects for Democracy

Brookings Institution Press, 2008

In China's Changing Political Landscape, leading experts examine China’s prospects for democracy and possible scenarios the country’s political development might follow. Examining the interplay of socioeconomic forces, institutional developments, leadership succession and demographic trends, Dr. Li and his colleagues address issues in Chinese domestic politics including changing leadership dynamics, the rise of business elites, increased demand for the rule of law, commercialization of the media and shifting civil-military relations. Dr. Li is the director of research and a senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center. Contributors to China’s Changing Political Landscape include National Committee members Jaques deLisle, Joseph Fewsmith, Alice Miller, James Mulvenon, Andrew Nathan, Barry Naughton, Minxin Pei, David Shambaugh and Dorothy Solinger.

Kenneth Lieberthal

Governing China: From Revolution Through Reform

W.W. Norton, 2004

“A masterful portrait of how China’s political system works. Lieberthal’s knowledge of the Chinese bureaucracy’s structure-formal and informal- and its operational culture is unrivaled in breadth and depth.”

–Andrew J. Nathan, Columbia University

Laurence J. C. Ma and Fulong Wu, eds.

Restructuring the Chinese City: Changing Society, Economy and Space

Routledge, 2005

“Restructuring the Chinese City brings together contributions from leading scholars on urban China to shed important light on critical issues of recent change in Chinese cities. The book will focus on how the new economy and changing society have (re)shaped urban space and place, and how the interplay among global, national and local forces comes together to reconfigure Chinese urban Space.”

Andrew Mertha

The Politics of Piracy: Intellectual Property in Contemporary China

Cornell University Press, 2005

"This very well-written book sets out a clear argument and follows it through the maze of China's bureaucracy, arriving finally at persuasive conclusions. I have never read such a vivid description of how Chinese bureaucracies connect to each other, from the center to the local level. Andrew C. Mertha provides an extremely lucid explanation of why some types of intellectual property rights are relatively well enforced and others are not."

--Joseph Fewsmith III, Professor and Director of the East Asia Interdisciplinary Studies Program, Boston University

Andrew Mertha

China's Water Warriors: Citizen Action and Policy Change

Cornell University Press, 2008

While China has roared ahead with water control and hydropower megaprojects, Western scholarship has been slow to update its stubborn paradigms. This book takes a big step in bringing theory more in line with the complex realities of political pluralism and protest found in China today."

--Tim Oakes, University of Colorado

Minxin Pei

China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy

Harvard University Press, 2008

China’s Trapped Transition, examines the sustainability of China’s dramatic economic progress in the context of the Chinese Communist Party’s reform strategy of pursuing pro-market economic policies under one-party rule. Dr. Pei, who is a senior associate in the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, assesses explanations for why China’s strategy has worked, and proposes that because the Communist Party must retain significant economic control to ensure its political survival, gradualism is unsustainable.