In this new work on ethnicity and identity, Chih-yu Shih, one of the most original and productive scholars writing about China, analyzes a variety of minority-group perspectives in their 'China moments' of dealing with the state .providing new insights into what it means to be Chinese today. - Peter Van Ness, Contemporary China Centre, Australian National University Professor Shih cites unprecedentedly rich material from a wide variety of Chinese minorities to show that people construct their ethnicities more variously than any of the usual theories would predict. The book remakes political anthropology as a kind of plate tectonics involving more collisions, subductions, withdrawals and contingencies than most accounts of ethnicities admit. Shih shows that such a view is needed to describe the nation that has become most populous. - Lynn White, Princeton University 'an important piece of work on the study of Chinese ethnicity' - Journal of Contemporary Asia.