This book investigates major Chinese-language films from mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in order to unpack a hyper-compressed capitalist modernity with distinctive Chinese characteristics. As a dialogue between the film genre as a mediation of microscopic social life, and the narrative of economic development as a macroscopic political abstraction, it engages the two otherwise remotely related worlds, illustrating how the State and the Subject are reconstituted cinematically in late capitalism.

David Leiwei Li is Professor of English and the Collins Professor of the Humanities at the University of Oregon, USA.

Introduction: "Culture and Contemporary Chinese Cinema in the Second Coming of Capitalism" Part I: Homo Economicus: Individual Liberty and Market Dependency 1. "Primitive Accumulation and the Emergence of the Liberal Subject in the People's Republic: Zhang Yimou's Red Sorghum and Zhou Xiaowen's Ermo" 2. "Crazy English with a Chinese Face: Zhang Yuan's Documentary on the Neoliberal Pedagogy of the Self" Part II: Homo Sentimentalis: The Transformation of Family and Intimacy 3. Neoliberalism's Family Values: (Re)production and (Re)creation in Ang Lee's Trilogy and Zhang Yimou's Happy Times 4. The Deregulation of Affect in Hou Hsiao-hsien and Yang De-chang Part III: Homo Ethicus: Towards Ecological Justice 5. "The World of Jia Zhangke Viewed: Neorealist Aesthetics against Neoliberal Logics" 6. "Abiding by Nature's Time: The Cautionary of Cannibal Capitalism in Fruit Chan's Dumplings"