The first volume in the Brookings Institution's new “Chinese Thinkers” series, this collection of works by Yu Keping provides a window into one of the most intriguing and potentially important new trends in thought within China's intellectual and political establishment. As Cheng Li discusses in his thoughtful and useful introduction, Yu Keping is a natural choice for the series' first volume: both an eminent scholar and a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official (Yu is the deputy director of the Compilation and Translation Bureau of the CCP's Central Committee), Yu is perhaps the most well-known and influential public intellectual in China today. His notoriety has been propelled by his widely read article, “Democracy is a good thing,” which appeared in various CCP-affiliated periodicals in 2005–06. This short article leads the volume's collection of essays, and is followed by carefully selected, edited and translated pieces by Yu on a variety of topics, including: the study of political science and public administration in China; the 17th Party Congress and its agenda for political reform; civil society in China; debates over culture and modernity from the late Qing through the present; discussion of, and experiments with, federalism in the early 20th century; economic and environmental challenges in the reform era; debates over globalization and national autonomy in the reform era; and the goals and impact of China's global rise. On all of these subjects, the prose is concise and clear, and the content is thought-provoking. Along with laying out Yu's knowledge about, and prescriptions for, cultural and political change in China, the essays analyse a vast amount of Chinese scholarship that has never before appeared in English.

While readers may be most interested in Yu's views on democracy, the volume contains an array of other interesting insights and information. For example, Yu provides an extensive taxonomy of the definitions and types of civil society organizations in China, as well as the administrative regulations and institutions that supervise these groups. These essays provide a clear picture of the extremely complex, convoluted and confusing environment within which Chinese civil society groups operate. Yu also highlights an intriguing irony: these excessive and overlapping regulations and institutions actually lead party-state agencies to shirk their supervisory responsibilities, leaving great gaps in oversight that allow civil society groups a fair amount of freedom. Also of interest is Yu's review of intellectual debates over the relationship between modernization, Westernization and Chinese culture. Arguing that the 1930s discourse on this topic is being replayed in China today, Yu analyses the major thinkers and schools of thought in both periods. His synthesis of 1930s intellectual debates is particularly valuable, as these arguments heretofore have received very little scholarly attention, even in Chinese. Also of note, although Yu heralds the contemporary emergence of a new Chinese culture that is neither a copy of the West nor an unchanged continuation of Chinese tradition, he cautions that proponents of Chinese culture may use it as an excuse to protect authoritarian forms of political rule.

This brings us to the issue of democracy in China. In the piece for which the volume is named, Yu makes the Churchillian argument that democracy is the best form of government because it has the fewest flaws. He also emphasizes that democracy is a universal human value. At the same time, however, Yu argues for an incremental approach to democratization, and for the need to adapt democracy to local conditions. The question that is begged by this statement parallels Yu's concern raised above: does adaptation to Chinese conditions mean the preservation of some non-democratic political features? For example, Yu does not include multi-party competition, alternation in political leadership, or free and fair national elections within his definition of democracy. Instead, he focuses on the maximization of public interests, government–citizen co-operation, active political participation, and political transparency. To the extent that these might be possible within the confines of continued single-party control of the central political system, the implication is that China may be (or become) fully democratic without the CCP having to cede power or subject its rule to popular election. It is unclear if Yu has fashioned this circumscribed view of democracy in order to open the way for more extensive democratization without alarming CCP elites and causing them to squelch the voices of individuals such as Yu. Regardless, Yu does not call for the kind of democracy that exists in the West.

Indeed, Yu's overall assessment of China's developmental trajectory and current political status is decidedly positive: whether in terms of environmental protections, management of globalization or political reform, Yu finds that the ruling CCP has made great strides in moving the country in a positive direction, effectively and rapidly addressing the many problems that have arisen alongside China's astounding economic growth. In this vein, Yu asserts that China's economic rise should in no way cause other nations to fear. Yu emphasizes that China's leaders desire a harmonious world within which China will continue to rise peacefully. Yet simultaneously, Yu stresses that world harmony can be achieved only when all nations respect the “equal sovereignty” of one another. The catch here appears when some nations do not abide by “universal values,” which in Yu's view includes democracy. In cases such as this, one wonders whether national sovereignty might be used as intellectual cover for authoritarian political rule – the very thing that Yu cautions against.