For years now, China’s economic and political rise has provoked fear—even paranoia—around the world. But how do we get our information about China, and how are our understandings of it actually produced?
            Constructing China presents a detailed examination of the means through which our knowledge of China is created. Rejecting the supposed objectivity of empirical statistics and challenging the assumption of a dichotomy between Western liberal democracy and Chinese authoritarianism, Mobo Gao dissects the political agenda and conceptual framework of commentators on China and urges those on the right and the left alike to be carefully critical of their own views on the nation’s politics, economics, and history.
 

Mobo Gao is professor of Chinese studies at the University of Adelaide and the author of The Battle for China’s Past, also published by Pluto Press.
 

— Joel Andreas, John Hopkins University

— Kerry Brown, Professor of Chinese Studies and Director, Lau China Institute

— Dorothy Solinger, Professor Emerita, University of California, Irvine