This is a curious book, brought out by the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution as the inaugural volume of their Chinese Thinkers Series. It is curious because the editors apparently think Yu Keping, deputy director of the Chinese Communist Party's Compilation and Translation Bureau, is a key ideological adviser to the top Chinese leadership, and that his arguments represent the prevailing view of China's elite reformers (themselves 'closet democrats'). Both these claims are exaggerated. One is reminded of the old days when Christian missionaries in China claimed to have identified 'court insiders' but more often than not got the wrong guys.
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