The transforming effect of the market economy and globalization on Chinese culture and society has raised many new topics and perspectives in Chinese studies. In literary and film studies, some have tried to describe the fundamental changes in cultural institution and production modes, while others have attempted to reassess the new relationship between writers and artists with the party/state and the market. Still others have used “global postmodernity” to explain the cultural and intellectual hybridity and contradictions. Jason McGrath conceives his new book as a dialogue with these approaches. He argues that, driven by the logic of capitalist marketization, the Chinese economy and culture are undergoing a transition from state heteronomy to relative autonomy (p. 9), which “is generated by, and ultimately must adjust itself to, various market conditions, from the demands of domestic consumers to those of a global cultural market” (p. 11). Thus, the fundamental condition and central cultural logic of China “is not essentially postmodern, but rather consistent with the fundamental dynamics of capitalist modernity itself” (p. 7). McGrath further suggests that postsocialist modernity is not confined to formerly communist states but rather is a global condition, a new development of global capitalism, of which China is becoming an integral part.

Based on this conceptual framework, McGrath's critical reading of a range of recent literary cinematic works and intellectual discourses since 1992 focuses on how they reflect and reflect on the condition and experience of postsocialist modernity. In chapter 2, he examines the social context and intellectual discourse of the humanist spirit debate in the 1990s and observes that the debate marked a shift in the configuration of cultural power in China under postsocialist modernity, “the centrality of the market to China's cultural life” (p. 28). In chapter 3, he uses the works and career paths of the avant-garde modernist Zhu Wen and best-selling writer Chi Li to illustrate the new dynamics of the literary world. He contends that new modes of autonomy are pursued and somehow achieved under the logic of the market, although it is a contingent and relative autonomy in which a market heteronomy replaces that of the state.

The strongest evidence of postsocialist modernity comes from Chinese film, which is the subject of the following three chapters. McGrath's intellectually engaged reading of film texts not only fleshes out the historical experience and artistic expressions of Chinese postsocialist modernity, but also offers many compelling insights into individual art works. For instance, in chapter 4, which discusses the trope of infidelity in Chinese films, McGrath carefully distinguishes the urban and rural varieties. “If the rural setting invokes the anxieties of incomplete modernization, the urban milieu presents both the attraction and the dangers of a modernity that may be out of control” (p. 124). In chapter 5, which discusses Jia Zhangke's works, he points out two distinct types of realism, the on-site documentary style and aesthetic long-take variety, and convincingly uses this change to show how independent filmmakers constantly negotiate national and world cinematic space, between social commentator and film art (p. 159). Again, in chapter 6, he recognizes the reflective and meta-cinematic nature of Feng Xiaogang's “entertainment film” Hesuipian and notes the mutually profitable collaboration between private capital and public agencies in producing these films. The strength of McGrath's analysis lies in his ability to give significance to individual works and to recognize the great variety and contradictions in cultural production in contemporary China.

My only difficulty is with McGrath's use of “postsocialist” to describe the global condition. On the one hand, the close relation between China and the United States indeed indicates “the co-existence of multiple temporalities and modes of productions, the symbiosis of capitalism and socialism,” as McGrath tries to show in his conclusion (p. 208). On the other hand, McGrath's use of this term risks blurring the differences in economic systems and cultural production between postsocialist countries and longtime capitalist countries. One consequence is that this book fails to address the lingering involvement of state and official forces, which constitute an important aspect of “postsocialist modernity”.

Overall, this book makes a great contribution to our understanding of cultural production in postsocialist China, and for scholars and students in Chinese studies, McGrath gives us the most theoretically nuanced and culturally informative analysis of Chinese film in recent years in English-language scholarship.