Andrew B. Kipnis is a senior fellow in the Departments of Anthropology and Political and Social Change at the Australian National University. He is the author of China and Postsocialist Anthropology: Theorizing Power and Society after Communism and Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self and Subculture in a North China Village.

"Kipnis convincingly demonstrates how crucial education is for shaping the strategies, dreams, and desires of Chinese families. But the main contribution of this book is the way it manages to place this educational desire in a larger context of how China is governed and in a comparative framework that shows Chinese students' feverish desire for education as part of a global phenomenon that cannot be reduced to Chinese, or even East Asian, cultural peculiarity." (Stig Thogersen, Aarhus University)"

Andrew B. Kipnis is a senior fellow in the Departments of Anthropology and Political and Social Change at the Australian National University. He is the author of China and Postsocialist Anthropology: Theorizing Power and Society after Communism and Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self and Subculture in a North China Village.

"Kipnis convincingly demonstrates how crucial education is for shaping the strategies, dreams, and desires of Chinese families. But the main contribution of this book is the way it manages to place this educational desire in a larger context of how China is governed and in a comparative framework that shows Chinese students' feverish desire for education as part of a global phenomenon that cannot be reduced to Chinese, or even East Asian, cultural peculiarity." (Stig Thogersen, Aarhus University)"