Based on official Chinese sources as well as intensive interviews with Hong Kong residents formerly employed in mainland factories, Andrew Walder's neo-traditional image of communist society in China will be of interest not only to those concerned with China and other communist countries, but also to students of industrial relations and comparative social science. "The best, most insightful work I have ever read about the nature of authority, politics, and social structure in any communist country. . . . [It] builds a coherent theory about the nature of communism that will be widely influential in comparative studies for a long time."--Daniel Chirot, "Journal of Asian Studies "Here is a book that smashes and rebuilds. It smashes widely held ideas about communist bureaucracy, charisma, the convergence of industrial societies. . . . It rebuilds our understanding of contemporary China and of communist regimes in general by showing how overlapping instrumental and personal ties, embedded in ideology and party organization, have reshaped Chinese industrial enterprises. By placing Chinese experience firmly and lucidly in comparative perspective, Walder helps us rethink non-communist enterprise as well." Charles Tilly, New School for Social Research "Here is a book that smashes and rebuilds. It smashes widely held ideas about communist bureaucracy, charisma, the convergence of industrial societies. . . . It rebuilds our understanding of contemporary China―and of communist regimes in general―by showing how overlapping instrumental and personal ties, embedded in ideology and party organization, have reshaped Chinese industrial enterprises. By placing Chinese experience firmly and lucidly in comparative perspective, Walder helps us rethink non-communist enterprise as well."―Charles Tilly, New School for Social Research Andrew G. Walder is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University.