The introduction presents the author, Xu Jin, and his work, providing a context for understanding the rise of public intellectuals like Xu. It follows the evolution of the post-Mao intellectual world in China from the 1980s to the present day, illustrating how China’s opening to the world and embrace of globalization has produced a newly sophisticated cohort of public intellectuals who are extremely sophisticated and well-versed in both Chinese and Western styles of knowledge production. It further analyzes the consequences of China’s rise on China’s public intellectuals, noting how this rise has produced a self-confident “Chinese academy” in which groups like the New Left and the New Confucians have largely embraced China’s burgeoning Party-State, leaving the Liberals—the group to which Xu Jilin belongs—as the only serious critics of China’s regime. The chapter concludes by offering a reading of Xu Jilin’s work as a liberal—but not a dissident—response to these changes.