In the last two decades of the twentieth century, following the worldwide collapse of communism, China ascended from being one of the most egalitarian societies in the world to one of the more unequal. Wang Feng documents the process of rising inequality in urban China during this period, and explores the underlying structural forces that define China's emerging social landscape.

By treating social categories created under socialism, such as cities and work organizations, as explicit forces generating inequality, the author reveals a pattern that embodies both enlarging inequality between social categories and persistent equality within them. This pattern is traced to China's post-socialist political economy and to a long-existing cultural tradition that places a premium on harmony and group solidarity. China's great reversal from equality to inequality is a powerful example of how social categories, not individual traits and preferences, structure and maintain inequality.

"Boundaries and Categories, by Wang Feng, is a timely publication on an issue of long-standing controversy. . . After more than a decade-long effort of careful and continuous research, Wang has delivered in this book a theoretically inspiring and empirically grounded analysis of the trend and sources of post-Mao Chinese income inequality. His analysis also strikes a good balance among sophisticated yet highly readable statistical results, dense descriptions, rich local knowledge, and coherent theoretical interpretation. This is a book that will, I anticipate, have a lasting impact on the research of transitional China and beyond." - American Journal of Sociology

"Wang Feng offers a sophisticated yet accessible investigation of the changing nature of inequality in China. He provides an excellent synthesis of the work to date in sociology, and carefully considers how sociologicalperspectives complement research by economists on the same topic." - University of Pennsylvania