The Mirage of China

<p> Today's world is one marked by the signs of digital capitalism and global capitalist expansion and China is increasingly being integrated into this global system of production and consumption. As a result China's immediate material impact is now felt almost everywhere in the world; however the significance and process of this integration is far from understood. This study shows how the a <i>priori</i> categories of statistical reasoning came to be re-born and re-lived in the People's Republic - as essential conditions for the possibility of a new mode of knowledge and governance. From the ruins of the Maoist revolution China has risen through a mode of quantitative self-objectification.</p><p> As the author argues an epistemological rift has separated the Maoist years from the present age of the People's Republic which appears on the global stage as a mirage. This study is an ethnographic investigation of concepts - of the conceptual forces that have produced and been produced by - two forms of knowledge life and governance. As the author shows the world of China contrary to the common view is not the Chinese world; it is a symptomatic moment of our world at the present time.</p>