• Introduction; 1. Orientation of the study; 2. Institutional commodification: concepts and categories of analysts; Part I. Instituted Processes of Commercial Clientelism: 3. The structure of commercial opportunity of Xiamen; 4. Symbiotic transactions between private firms and public units; 5. Enhancing expectations: the social organization of contracts; 6. Entrepreneurial paths and capital: personal attributes as competitive advantage; Part II. Economic and Political Outcomes: 7. Comparing economic performance in China and Eastern Europe; 8. The transformation of political order; 9. Epilogue: evolutionary trends in the 1990s.

"The most important book yet to appear on China's emerging private sector, David Wank's Commodifying Communism is also a major contribution to comparative economic sociology. Drawing carefully on extensive fieldwork among China's new urban entrepreneurs, Wank shows how private entrepreneurship emerges from within the social and political relationships of an earlier period. His carefully conceptualized analysis takes on a range of popular ideas about the transition to a market economy and has clear implications for the analysis of all market economies emerging from the Soviet model." Andrew G. Walder, Stanford University