The Rise and Fall of the EAST

The book veers seamlessly between deep insight and radically irresponsible characterization. Huang provides an incredible view into the inner workings of the modern Chinese state and its inheritance from previous Chinese dynasties. Besides that, however, Huang periodically resurrects eugenic tropes and makes the more forgivable but still poor error of conflating "objective" with quantitative in a variety of contexts. This book also frequently contrasts with European dynasties and development, which while occasionally helpful as a contrast to China's development more often comes out as idealizing and flattening Western history. Finally, Huang employs a grab bag of stylized facts in later chapters to make ideological points, despite directly criticizing that approach earlier in the book. If you breeze through those sections, however, there's definitely useful analysis here.