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Despite its achievements in economic growth, the People's Republic of China is facing its most serious legitimacy crisis since its founding in 1949. Its political order is, however, cracking at the seams. But the roots of this crisis are generally misunderstood in the west because the predominant conceptual framework and terminology have lost validity in explaining China. The most misleading assumption is that political problems in China would come from its lack of "democratic legitimacy," for this interpretation cannot explain why the crisis starts to manifest itself during China's most sustained period of economic boom in history. It is the contention of this book that the main source of China's legitimacy crisis comes from elsewhere: a clash between "Confucian legitimacy," or the traditional "mandate of heaven," and the alien feature of the Communist ruling machine. This book, with its focus on the question of legitimacy, provides a cogent interpretation.