The big story here is that China is “a country that’s feverishly on the move,” from “farming and folkways, to new cities and their sprouting factories.”

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‘Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China,’ by Evan Osnos

“Age of Ambition” is a “riveting and troubling portrait of a people in a state of extreme anxiety about their identity, values and future.” In the book, “Osnos paints a China rived by moral crisis and explosive frustration, whose citizens are desperate to achieve wealth, even as they are terrified of being left with nothing. The Communist Party leadership, Osnos writes, is so morally and intellectually bankrupt that only the uneasy bargain to provide ‘prosperity in exchange for loyalty’ allows it to retain a semblance of legitimacy. Even so, ‘the gap between the society’s meritocratic myth and its oligarchic reality was becoming clear and measurable.’”

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‘Out of Mao’s Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China,’ by Philip P. Pan

Pan’s “Out of Mao’s Shadow” assesses the “current state of the world’s most populous nation, looking at both the growing personal freedom its citizens now enjoy and the Communist Party’s continued monopoly on power. He notes that prosperity has raised people’s expectations and access to information, even as it’s helped the government forestall democratization: many citizens who might once have become dissidents have grown increasingly focused on their private lives and the opportunity to make money quickly, while party officials, who ‘can often determine who succeeds and fails in the new capitalist economy,’ wield ‘tremendous leverage over the emerging class of private businessmen and entrepreneurs that might otherwise support political change.’”

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Chinese Voices