The realities of the social life in China's business practices reveal an increasing divergence from the ideologies of the Chinese state. In this engaging work, Xin Liu examines the Asian economic crisis and, particularly, the rise of China as a major trading power in the region. Liu illuminates a history of conjuncture, including the effects of the Maoist revolution and the influence of transnational capital and capitalism.

The Otherness of Self, in addition to being an anthropological study of the development of so-called high-tech industries in (South) China, also explores the complex formation of capital in a developing new world of business practices. By tracing the birth and development of the Beihai Star Group, a high-tech company that achieved success despite a major national economic crisis, Xin Liu shows how a capitalist order emerged within a self-proclaimed socialist country.

Xin Liu is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. A researcher as well as a teacher, his interests include the condition of life in contemporary China and East Asia, and the effects of transnational capitalism in the transformation of East Asian societies. Liu's work has been honored by the British Council, the Japan Foundation, and, most recently, the University of California at Berkeley. Among his many other accomplishments, he is also the author of In One's Own Shadow: An Ethnographic Account of the Condition of Post-reform Rural China.