Providing a comprehensive assessment, by experts, of the world's largest communist state in the throes of major reform, this study presents essays that range over the whole spectrum of Chinese life in the late 1980s and discuss the country's social fabric, leadership, intellectual freedom, armed forces, foreign policy, economic management, and the future of socialism. Contributors include Gerald Segal, Anita Chan, Terrell Carver, Max Boisot, Marc Blecher, Lawrence P. Sullivan, Michele Ledic, Lee Lai To, and Harlan Jencks.