This volume of nine scholarly essays provides a cohesive analysis of China's Catholics as they both resisted and adjusted to their new circumstance under Communist rule after 1949. While some of the chapters consider Catholic realities during the Maoist years (1949–1976), most of the book's attention centers on China's Catholic history after Christians garnered more freedoms during the 1980s. Cindy Yik-yi Chu describes the volume's general themes in chapter 1, noting that the essays intend to provide readers “the information and insights needed to better understand Sino-Vatican relations” in the aftermath of Pope Francis's signed agreement with China's authorities in 2018.

The essays are divided into four parts that follow well-structured contours. In part 1, Gianni Criveller and Sergio Ticozzi analyze the Party's policies toward religion, especially Christianity, and the origins of China's underground Catholic community. Part 2 confronts the legacies of China's two most influential bishops after 1949. Rachel Zhu Xiaohong describes Bishop Jin Luxian's (1916–2013) so-called “Four-Horse Carriage” model of church governance, while Beatrice Leung considers the opposing strategies of Cardinal Joseph Zen. In part 3, Raissa De Gruttola outlines the historical circumstances that facilitated Gabriel Alegra's (1907–1976) first complete Catholic translation of the Bible into Chinese, and she provides a cogent description of the translations that followed. Zhang Zhipeng's chapter examines Catholic charitable efforts in China after 1979 and also notes how those efforts influenced Chinese opinion of Catholicism. Part 4 concludes with two studies of how China's Catholic Church continues to survive and flourish through new initiatives and the preservation of long-hallowed traditions. Bruno Lepau considers how youth ministry attempts to strengthen the faith of young Catholics in China's present climate of urbanization and growing materialism. Paul Mariani's essay explains how church authorities and pious Catholics variously understood and represented the popular 1980 Marian “miracle” at Sheshan, near Shanghai.

Each study is adroitly researched, and, unlike many edited volumes that stray into disjointed analyses, this collection fulfils its general aim to help scholars better understand the turbulent landscape of Sino-Vatican relations since 1949. The essays do at times meander into clichéd dichotomies—irreconcilable Vatican-Communist antagonisms—but, in the end, this is an exemplary collection of chapters that explain the historical vicissitudes that have troubled China's Catholic community for several decades. This volume will remain an important work on post-Maoist Catholic studies largely because of the quality of its scholarship but mostly because of the clarity of its analysis.