We are living in a period of maturation for scholarship on China by Chinese intellectuals writing in English. This is cause for celebration indeed. Zhidong Hao's book is part of this process. It offers a wide variety of readers a unique perspective upon the lives and dilemmas of China's intelligentsia today. This is at once an ‘internal’ perspective – skilfully, imaginatively culled from sources in Chinese, as well as an ‘external’ highly theoretical interpretation of the evolution of Chinese intellectual life in keeping with the latest literature in the sociology of knowledge.

Writing about Chinese intellectuals is always difficult – partly because of the convolutions of political censorship that have constrained self expression in the People's Republic and partly because there is a long-standing tradition of mutual contempt in Chinese scholarship about owners of socially contested knowledge. Wenren xiang qing (“literati belittle one another”) was the curse of Confucian elites. Today's China is not much better off, although Party control muffles intra-intellectual debates. Zhidong Hao avoids this tradition of contempt by taking seriously what intellectuals themselves have to say about their own experiences in China, how they see their predicament, opportunities and future.