Driving Toward Modernity

Jun Zhang's Driving Toward Modernity: Cars and the Lives of the Middle Class in Contemporary China presents an exceptional and fascinating ethnographic study that examines the relationship between the rise of the 'automotive regime' and the (re-)emergence of the middle class.

(China Information)

This rich ethnography will be a benchmark for any forthcoming scholarly work on car consumption in China. Zhang's ethnographic account of the car-owning mobility of middle-class consumers in southern China represents a major contribution to an important topic in the understanding of contemporary Chinese society.

(Pacific Affairs)

Jun Zhang's analytical goal has been admirably achieved, and the book will be a welcome addition to a growing field of scholarship on automobility and its impacts and revelations across different locales.

(Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute)