While many China watchers speculate on this country’s future, William Callahan presents the views of 20 prominent Chinese public figures. These include political leaders, scholars, artists, and dissidents. The book is both ambitious and limited: ambitious in Callahan’s wide reading of political, intellectual, and cultural leaders and in his careful comparison and contrast of their views; limited in the sense that he does not analyze the merits of the different visions of the future or what other countries should do in response. The book is designed to promote greater understanding of Chinese debates about the future.

The key theme of China Dreams is that there is no singular dream. Callahan explores the speeches and writings of leaders like Xi Jinping and Hu Jintao, economists like Justin Yifu Lin and Hu Angang, political scientists like Pan Wei and Cui Zhiyuan, and others. The key debates center on the relationship between political and economic goals, equality and hierarchy, and the meaning of civilization. He finds some common but no universal viewpoints. Some fear economic liberalization; others promote it. Some seek liberal democracy; others see it as antithetical to Chinese traditions. Some promote the “China model” (although they do not agree on what it constitutes); others see it as the source of social injustice. For some, the future is bright; for others it is uncertain and angst ridden.

Why these 20 individuals? Callahan does not describe his strategy for selecting his pool of people to analyze beyond saying that they are “noteworthy because they are important in the [Peoples Republic of China]” (p. 15) and acknowledging that they “were chosen after heated discussions with friends and colleagues in China and around the world” (p. 14). If others had been chosen, would he not have found other visions of the China dream? But that is Callahan’s point: We should never assume that Chinese leaders and thinkers have similar views, even when they use seemingly similar terminology. We need to read and listen more carefully to find the points of debate.

The author notes that these 20 visions of the future can be placed into three categories: those that advocate convergence with the West; those that want to maintain a mix of Western and Chinese values and institutions; and those that seek divergence from the West, even to the point of socializing the rest of the world into China’s new global order. These viewpoints repeat and carry forward a debate that has played out in China since the nineteenth century: Are outside influences the cause of China’s problems or the solution to them? Should China learn from foreign models or strengthen and restore its own traditions? The 20 visions make clear that there is no consensus on these questions.

The first five chapters present summaries of key individuals on matters of foreign relations, economic development, race, and views of the future from the vantage point of city and countryside. There is also an interesting chapter comparing the American and Chinese dreams and, by extension, American and Chinese exceptionalism. Just as in earlier chapters he presented multiple China dreams, Callahan describes how the American dream has multiple meanings. They too easily become mere slogans with implied connotations, rather then well-defined content. Not all dreams in either the United States or China are compatible, yet the same slogan is used to convey quite different meanings. Callahan rightly notes that the American and China dreams are fundamentally different, however they are defined: The American dream “generally promotes individual freedom and success, and it tends to be suspicious of state power,” whereas the China dream “generally is national rejuvenation through state power” (p. 162). This contrast between individual and collective interests distinguishes the American dream and the China dream. Many Chinese are clearly seeking upward mobility, greater equality, home ownership, and other attributes of a middle-class lifestyle, but these individual goals are generally not part of the China dream.

A recurring theme throughout the book is the role of “citizen intellectuals.” Beyond saying that they are not synonymous with public intellectuals in liberal societies, Callahan does not give a precise definition of this concept. It has somewhat fluid boundaries: When artists like Ai Weiwei become dissidents, or social critics like Taiwan’s Lung Ying-tai become government officials, they cease being citizen intellectuals, at least for a time. But Callahan also uses the label to describe a senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, a scholar who works in the government’s Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and even nineteenth-century scholar-officials. Although he claims that they are growing in influence, it is not clear who their audience is or what they are influencing. It is worth noting that several years ago, the Chinese government actively discouraged use of the term “public intellectual,” in part because it did not want public debate over political and economic issues. The same concern would seem to apply to citizen intellectuals.

The book ends on a somewhat whimsical note, using a popular movie and the best-selling novel it was based on to ask how compatible Chinese and Western models are. To get ahead in life, how important are individual ambitions and ideals relative to the needs of the company (and, by extension, the country)? Because China’s story is still being written, there is no definitive answer to this question. More generally, the book provides no clear answers on the China dreams and was not intended to do so. It is designed to give general readers an appreciation of the diverse viewpoints related to China’s future. On that score, Callahan succeeds well.

China Dreams joins a few other books that also survey ongoing debates within China, including Daniel Lynch’s China’s Futures (2015), Mark Leonard’s What Does China Think? (2008), and, arguably the best of the genre, Joseph Fewsmith’s China since Tiananmen (2001). Like these other books, there is a danger that the specific examples will soon be outdated, but the broader issues have proven to be quite durable. It will be of greatest interest to those who seek an introduction to the debates underway among China’s leaders, scholars, and artists about their country’s present and future.