Xu Jilin is Professor of History at Shanghai Normal University, and is one of China's most prominent public intellectuals. His many articles and books have focused on various aspects of China's modern intellectual history. David Ownby is Professor of History at the Université de Montréal. He worked on the history of societies in Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in Early and Mid-Qing China (1996) and popular religion in Falun Gong and the Future of China (2008), before returning to an earlier interest in contemporary Chinese intellectual life.

• Preface; Editor and translator's introduction; 1. What kind of civilization? China at a crossroads; 2. The spector of leviathan: a critique of Chinese statism since 2000; 3. Universal civilization, or Chinese values? A critique of historicist thought since 2000; 4. After the 'Great Disembedding': family-state, tianxia, and self; 5. What body for Confucianism's lonely soul?; 6. The new tianxia: rebuilding China's internal and external order; 7. Two kinds of enlightenment: civilizational consciousness or cultural consciousnes; 8. Li Shenzhi: the last scholar-official, the last hero; Glossary; Index.

'Within China today, there are many voices calling for reforms. Among them is the prominent liberal scholar Xu Jilin. And in Rethinking China's Rise: A Liberal Critique, David Ownby has produced an excellent English translation of eight essays Xu has written over the past decade.' Kishore Mahbubani, Harper's Magazine