This book analyzes the 'intellectual political culture' of post-Tiananmen China in comparison
to and in conflict with liberalism inside and outside the P.R.C. How do mainland politics and
discourses challenge 'our' own chiefly liberal and anti-'statist' political frameworks? To
what extent is China paradoxically intertwined with a liberal economism? How can one understand
its general refusal of liberalism as well as its frequent direct responses to electoral
democracy universalism Western media and other normative forces? Vukovich argues that the
Party-state poses a challenge to our understandings of politics globalization and even
progress. To be illiberal is not necessarily to be reactionary and vulgar but more
interestingly to be anti-liberal and to seek alternatives to a degraded liberalism. In this
way Chinese politics illuminate the global conjuncture and may have lessons in otherwise bleak
times.