Introduction: the rise of Hu Jintao and the traits of the fourth-generation leadership -- The crisis of legitimacy: Hu Jintao's search for a perennial mandate of heaven -- The communist party vs. peasants and workers: will Hu Jintao's "new social contract" work? -- The scourge of governmental stagnation: the price of holding up political reform -- The fourth-generation leadership's ambitious foreign-policy agenda -- The challenge of nationalism, and other ideas and trends for the new century -- Conclusion: where is the new thinking?
