Explaining how capitalist institutional transformation has come to China in the absence of regime transition or political mobilization by private entrepreneurs, Tsai (political science, Johns Hopkins U.) argues that private entrepreneurs have adopted adaptive informal institutions in collaboration with local officials that helped undermine and transform the formal institutions that were once configured to constrain the activities of business owners. In analyzing this process, he simultaneously constructs a political-economic theory of why China's private entrepreneurs are unlikely to become a force agitating for democratic change. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)