Globalization has created challenges and opportunities which all countries have to grapple with. Yongnian Zheng explores how China's leaders have embraced global capitalism and market-oriented modernization by encouraging individual enterprise and the reform of economic institutions. While open to importing Western ideas in rebuilding the economic system, the same leaders have been reluctant to import Western concepts of democracy and the rule of law. Zheng argues that, ultimately, this selectivity will impede China's progress in becoming a modern nation state.

Yongnian Zheng is Associate Professor at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore. His previous publications include Discovering Chinese Nationalism (1999) and China's Post-Jiang Leadership Succession (2002).

1. Globalization: state decline or state rebuilding?; 2. State, leadership and globalization; 3. Globalism, nationalism and selective importation; 4. Power, interests, and the justification of capitalism; 5. Bureaucratic reform and market accommodation, 1982¿98; 6. Building a modern economic state; 7. State rebuilding, popular protest and collective action; 8. Contending visions of the Chinese state; 9. Globalization: towards a rule-based state governance?