This volume, first published two years ago in Germany, is a welcome addition to the growing number of English language studies on entrepreneurship and private sector development in Vietnam and China. But, whereas other work aims to account for the operation, financing and development of this sector, Heberer's work has a narrower, if no less ambitious mission: to demonstrate that entrepreneurs are on the way “to replace the state as an agency of development and modernization” (p. 1).

For Heberer, this process is an amalgam of various and often contradictory forces that find private entrepreneurs, intentionally or otherwise, driving substantive social and political change. For this reason, Heberer rejects a number of alternative labels that might be used to describe these actors, such as “class,” “interest group,” and “strata.” Instead, he argues that they are best regarded as a “strategic group,” a phrase meant to indicate the power of entrepreneurs not only as collective self-interested actors, but also as symbols of new values and beliefs (p. 69 and p. 341).