A Memoir from China's Wrinkled Story

Seven years ago, during a trip to China, I became acquainted with Xi Jinping’s book *The Governance of China*. Naturally, based on my initial impression and experience, I regarded it as a collection of statements by China’s highest official authority and as a declaration from the Communist Party. Seven years ago, during a trip to China, I became acquainted with Xi Jinping’s book *The Governance of China*. Naturally, based on my initial impression and experience, I regarded it as a collection of statements by China’s highest official authority and as a declaration from the Communist Party. I borrowed a copy of the book from my academic colleagues and, purely out of curiosity, browsed its table of contents and read the chapters related to my field of expertise and interests. In that very first review, the tone of the writing and the author’s courteous self-criticism, coupled with humility, clarified some of my questions about why and how China’s system of administration and governance works, and made it possible for me to understand some of the ambiguities and even apparent contradictions in the functioning of this system. At the same time, new questions also took shape for me in the field of Chinese history and political philosophy—questions that made the roots of fundamental differences, mistaken comparisons, and ultimately the inability to understand China’s trajectory of transformation, even among many scholars and elites in the East and the West, more apparent.. coverage-difference paragraph