Chen Jie, Political Science and International Relations, The University of Western Australia, Australia

A salient trend in studies of China and transnational civil society - two newly influential global forces - is the converging of their paths. Thousands of international NGOs and foundations have come to operate in China in the 'low politics' of environment, development and epidemics, while democracy activists campaign on China from outside. This path-breaking book investigates transnational groups' evolving relations with China and its NGO sector, and compares China with transnational stories of party states in Eastern Europe and Taiwan.

This book discusses the penetration, growth and operation of transnational civil society (TCS) in China. It explores TCS' impacts on the incremental development of China's political pluralism, mainly through exploring the influences of the leading TCS actors on the country's bottom-up and self-governing activist NGOs that have sprung up spontaneously, in terms of capacities, strategies, leadership and political outlook, as a result of complex interactions between the two sectors.

Transnational Civil Society in China opens up a new frontier in discussing the society, politics and international relations of China that will appeal to scholars and researchers studying China and transnational/global civil society.