The essays in this volume aim to reconceptualize he political economy of the People's Republic of China by highlighting the changing character of urban-rural and state-society conflicts in the era of Mao Zedong's leadership and in the post-Mao reforms. While noting China's economic achievements, the analysis underscores major ironies of the mobilizational collectivism of the late Mao period as well as the conflicts being played out in the reforms centered on the countryside and China's international economic relations in the 1980s.