Scott Kennedy is Associate Professor, Departments of East Asian Languages & Cultures and Political Science, and Director, Research Center for Chinese Politics and Business, Indiana University. He is author of The Business of Lobbying in China (Harvard University Press, 2005) and editor of China Cross Talk: The American Debate over China Policy Since Normalization, A Reader (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). His current research projects are on the growing role of Chinese industry and government in global governance and on the evolution of corporate political activity in China.

This book breaks new ground by systematically examining China's capitalist transformation through several comparative lenses. The great majority of research on China to date has consisted of single-country studies. This is the result of the methodological demands of studying China and a sense of the country's distinctiveness due to its grand size and long history. The moniker Middle Kingdom, a direct translation of the Chinese-language word for China, is one of the most prominent symbols of the country's supposed uniqueness.

Composed of contributions from leading specialists on China's political economy, this volume demonstrates the benefits of systematically comparing China with other countries, including France, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, India, Brazil, and South Africa. Doing so puts the People's Republic in a light not available through other approaches, and it provides a chance to consider political theories by including an important case too often left out of studies.