Since the 1980s, China has longed for an important role on the international economic scene and has therefore tried to promote an image of modernization. Having increased its efforts towards international integration, domestic reform continues to present China with one of its greatest challenges. This volume analyses several important aspects of today's China: economic changes, the search for a social compact in urban China, the identification of new social conflicts that coexist in the dialectics of control and cohesion and the problem of nation building and collective identities.