Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos

Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

by Evan Osnos

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History & Foreign AffairsSociety & Culture

Osnos spent eight years reporting from China and builds this book around people chasing what the title names: fortune, truth and faith. Through tycoons, dissidents, propagandists and religious seekers, he argues that the rise of individual ambition has put ordinary Chinese on a collision course with a Party determined to keep control.

Core ideas
  • China's central drama is the rise of the individual, as hundreds of millions remake their own lives in pursuit of fortune, truth and faith.
  • The Party can deliver prosperity but not meaning, and its control of information strains against people who now expect to choose what they believe.
  • Economic opening did not bring political opening: aspiration and authoritarianism are on a collision course rather than converging.
Published2014
Pages403
ISBN9780374280741
ReadOct 2026

Connected to 4 other books

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