With this book Lynda Bell contributes a major piece to our understanding of China's modern economic history. The core of the book is a detailed description of the evolution of the silk industry in central China between the late 19th century and the mid-20th century. Bell's exhaustively researched analysis covers each level of silk production in Wuxi county, from the rural household producers of cocoons, to the intermediate level cocoon merchants and local filatures, to the major firms that by the early 1930s controlled much of the market through modern, vertically integrated organizations.