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China Factors: Political Perspectives and Economic Interactions . Gordon C. K. Cheung. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 2007. xii + 165 pp. $42.95; £32.95. ISBN 987-0-7658-0342-9

main contribution of this work is not a theoretical expansion and deepening of the field, but rather its empirical richness. The author measures the influence of factional groups and individual party leaders by way of power and group cohesion indexes. This method of measuring power and influence leads to debatable results. Since the provincial leaders dominate the central committee in terms of numbers and therefore represent a stronger measurement than central leaders on the power index, the reader is led to believe that China is ruled by the provinces. But this is clearly not the conclusion the author would like to arrive at. Another example concerns Xu Kuangdi, mayor of Shanghai in the period from 1995 to 2001. Among the Shanghai party leaders Xu Kuangdi is here listed as having the deepest ties with other Shanghai government leaders (p. 148). Did this do him any good when he was fired as mayor of Shanghai and transferred to the Academy of Engineering in Beijing? Measured by the group cohesion index, the princelings constitute the weakest factional group. Among the princelings Xi Jinping does not stand out as a particularly well-connected person. He ranked 151st out of 151 alternate members of the 15th Central Committee (p. 409), indicating that he was not particularly popular among the members of this elite political body. Yet Xi Jinping is now member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo and poised to become the future party leader of China. This appears to show that the future career of Chinese leaders does not depend on quantitative relations (how many you know), but rather on qualitative relations (who you know) and increasingly also on personal capabilities. Bo Zhiyue is very critical of Jiang Zemin and the Shanghai Gang, constantly using the derogative term ‘‘Jiang and his cronies’’ when he talks about the former party leader and his allies. In the conclusion (p. 428), Bo even writes about what he calls Jiang’s ‘‘terrible performance and inferior capabilities,’’ how Jiang clung to power and had to be ‘‘pushed away.’’ The sources do not substantiate such a categorical statement. In fact the transition from Jiang to Hu seemed to rest on an amazing degree of consensus and does not appear to be best characterized by Jiang’s attempt to secure a ‘‘two-front arrangement’’ (p. 217) for himself, thereby attempting to sabotage Hu’s pursuance of a generational succession model. There are a few minor discrepancies in the use of the statistical data as well as in the translations of the titles of the Chinese sources. However, the overall impression is that this is an important handbook, almost a Who’s Who in China, with an impressive wealth of information on the career background of Chinese leaders. The book is a must for anyone interested in the topic.