Everything is Allowed, Nothing is Permitted: Vice, Crime and Corruption in New China

(Hardback)

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To get rich is glorious, declared Deng Xiaoping, the architect of modern Chinas economic miracle but there has been a dark side to this rush to glory and riches, both for the winners and for those who have been left behind. In Everything is Allowed, Nothing is Permitted Robert Foyle Hunwick tells the hidden story of how crime, vice and corruption have flourished in modern China. From the outbreaks of politicized lawlessness in the Mao years, the book charts the flourishing of criminality in the era of opening and reform through to the present day strike hard campaigns against corruption under Xi Jinping. There are stories here of business fixers, corrupt rural elites, notorious serial killers, spiralling drug use and the flourishing sex trade in Chinas urban centres. Hunwick looks beyond the official propaganda of a united and peaceful state to reveal a nation that is both built on and existentially threatened by an intricate economy of violence, dark money, power and influence.

Reviews

Beneath the party platitudes and state media hosannas on Chinas phenomenal development over the past few decades, there is another story. One which Robert Hunwick uncovers with tireless research and a storytellers eye for a gripping narrative. * Jeremiah Jenne, Writer and Historian, China *
Everything is Allowed, Nothing is Permitted explores a China rarely featured in books or articles which often focus on economics and political drama over societal realities there is another side of China, darker, deeper underground, not seen in any Chinese or English literature, but nevertheless just as important. Robert Foyle Hunwick provides a glimpse of that world. * Karoline Kan, journalist and author of "Under Red Skies: The Life and Times of a Chinese Millennial" *
A vivid account of a Chinese society rarely seen by outsiders, Everything is Allowed, Nothing is Permitted is full of insight, first-hand details, and anecdotes that pay testament to the authors deep research. * Phoebe Zhang, South China Morning Post *

Author Bio

Robert Foyle Hunwick is a journalist who lives and works in China. He reports regularly for the Daily Telegraph and his journalism has been published in Vice, Slate, The Atlantic and Esquire. He also runs the influential blog Beijing Cream and is Senior Editor at the English-language magazine Thats Beijing. Known as the reporter who writes about the China the Party doesnt want you to see, he has authored several talked-about articles on swinging, drug-use and corruption.