Age of Ambition

What happens when a society unleashes unstoppable ambition inside an unyielding system of control? In Age of Ambition, Evan Osnos traces how China’s explosive rise since the late 1970s intertwines prosperity, censorship, pride, and search for meaning. The book’s core argument is that China’s transformation produces a new contradiction: the freedom to pursue dreams of wealth and education alongside a rigid political boundary that limits speech and civic participation.

Economic liberalization without political freedom

Reform begins with Deng Xiaoping’s bargain—“Let some people get rich first.” Markets open, entrepreneurship flourishes, and ambition spreads faster than any ideology could contain it. Yet political pluralism remains frozen. Deng’s formula gives the Communist Party legitimacy through prosperity, not revolution. Millions migrate from countryside to factory towns; figures like Lin Yifu and Gong Haiyan embody mobility from obscurity to success. But beneath the economic surge lies a managed system—the hukou restrictions, selective censorship, and Party oversight—that reminds citizens how far aspiration can go before hitting invisible limits.

The culture of aspiration

Material success breeds new psychological hunger. Consumption becomes self-expression, with English fluency, designer goods, and foreign schooling as marks of arrival. Li Yang’s “Crazy English” movement and phenomena like Harvard Girl capture how ambition turns inward—remaking identity rather than just income. You buy smartphones and Ivy League coaching not only to gain skills, but to declare your personal worth. The market sells identity, and you willingly buy it.

Information control and the Internet paradox

As the web expands, so does censorship. The Central Propaganda Department evolves from issuing ideological slogans to managing data flow. The “Great Firewall” blocks dissent, yet online space breeds both criticism and nationalism—the fen qing (“angry youth”) defending China against foreign slights. Videos like Tang Jie’s viral 2008 montage show how citizens, not the state, can manufacture patriotism. You discover that technology amplifies both rebellion and loyalty, making control messier and more diffuse.

Dissent and truth-seeking

Artists and intellectuals become the conscience of the age. Ai Weiwei, Hu Shuli, and Han Han each bend creative tools toward social critique—art installations, investigative journalism, and satire. Liu Xiaobo and Charter 08 mark the hard edge of dissent, punished by imprisonment and censorship. When Liu wins the Nobel Peace Prize, his empty chair symbolizes the cost of truth-telling. The state’s choreography of silence—black screens, banned search terms—shows how tightly narrative control is linked to legitimacy.

The new public sphere

Meanwhile, citizens forge alternative public life through Weibo and viral outrage. The Little Yueyue video forces moral reckoning; Chen Guangcheng’s sunglasses campaign transforms isolation into national empathy. Protest patterns shift toward modest symbolic acts rather than mass revolutions—"strolling protests" or shared hashtags. The government adapts with legal crackdowns and online paid commentators. Public space becomes a negotiation over visibility.

Inequality and spiritual longing

As wealth divides, the moral dimension returns. The Ant Tribes and diaosi youths struggle with stagnation and humiliation amid soaring housing costs. Religion and philosophy—Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, and civic ethics—reemerge to fill the “spiritual void.” Figures like Reverend Jin Mingri in Beijing’s Zion Church and scholars like Li Ling and Michael Sandel offer frameworks beyond material gain. Faith and thought become refuges from the exhaustion of ambition.

Core takeaway

China’s story is no longer just about growth—it’s about meaning. Economic miracle meets moral reckoning; ambition becomes both empowerment and strain. The Party’s enduring challenge is not managing GDP, but managing desire: a people who have learned to dream, speak, and seek truth faster than their politics evolve.

As you move through the book, keep one image in mind—the “birdcage economy.” The bird inside is free enough to fly, but only within the cage. The size of the cage—and who gets to stretch it—defines China’s modern drama of ambition and control.

China’s transformation is written in movement. Hundreds of millions leave farms for cities, creating the world’s largest human migration. The hukou system, originally meant to fix people to birthplace, becomes the invisible boundary between opportunity and exclusion.

The mechanics of the hukou constraint

If you were born rural, your official identity limits schooling, healthcare, and housing rights in cities. By the 2000s, the “floating population” reached over 130 million. Workers building skyscrapers sleep in dorms without benefits. Migrants’ children struggle to access schooling—a tension that fuels competitiveness and urban inequality.

Gong Haiyan and the ladder of ambition

Gong Haiyan’s story distills how mobility works when ambition meets opportunity. From soldering wires in Zhuhai to graduate studies at Fudan and creation of Jiayuan (an online dating empire), her life charts migration as ascent. She shows that access—education, technology, and urban networks—can compound progress, but only for those who navigate institutional perimeters.

Urbanization and intimacy

Mobility reaches into family life. Homeownership becomes prerequisite for marriage. Men race to buy apartments to meet social expectations; women seek “chefang jibei” partners—car-and-home equipped. A consumer norm turns into a moral divide between those who can stake roots and those still floating.

Key understanding

Mobility in modern China is a paradox: it promises freedom but reinforces inequality. The stories of migrants reveal the human cost behind industrial miracles—migration is the bloodstream of the economy and the crucible of identity.

You learn to read migration not just as economic fact but as emotional narrative—the journey from confined origin to self-made hope against structural constraint.

Behind China’s modern façade lies a sophisticated battle over truth. The Central Propaganda Department evolves into a system that manages perception. Yet every expansion of censorship comes with a counterreaction—the rise of netizens, leaks, and satire.

The structure of control

Thousands of editors receive invisible memos dictating what to avoid. Directives bury sensitive terms like “empty chair” after Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel ceremony. The Department measures influence through ratings and views rather than slogans—a blend of commerce and control typical of mature authoritarian regimes.

The Internet: disruption and adaptation

The Great Firewall blocks foreign platforms while domestic ones (Weibo, Bilibili) thrive under surveillance. Every leak—from Shi Tao’s sentencing to Hu Shuli’s Caijing exposés—illustrates dynamic censorship. Activists post, censors delete, posts reappear modified. You watch negotiation unfold in real time.

Nationalism and the angry youth

Online nationalism is grassroots. Tang Jie’s six-minute video defending China against Western media distortions garners millions of views. Educated, digitally fluent young patriots simultaneously distrust elites and defend the state. This dual identity makes online nationalism volatile—pride mixed with grievance.

Insight

Censorship today is fluid negotiation, not static prohibition. The Web multiplies voices, forcing the Party to adapt through moderation, flooding, and selective engagement—a model of control through calculated openness.

The digital battlefield reveals China’s core tension: how to preserve authority while citizens acquire the power to narrate themselves.

Evan Osnos shows how resistance persists through creativity. Artists, writers, and editors don’t only critique—they reshape public imagination. Ai Weiwei, Hu Shuli, and Han Han become moral barometers for a society learning to speak under constraint.

Artistic activism

Ai Weiwei turns art into public inquiry. His response to the Sichuan earthquake—counting 5,212 lost children—challenges official silence. His installation of backpacks as memorials converts grief into resistance. The state retaliates with surveillance and tax charges, proving that creativity exposes authority’s nerves.

Investigative journalism

Hu Shuli’s Caijing magazine tests boundaries with investigative work on corruption and collapse. Her eventual walkout to form Caixin marks evolution from compliance to independence—proof that truth sometimes survives by migrating to new institutions rather than negotiating within old ones.

Popular voice

Han Han, novelist and blogger, plays jester to power. Through satire—mocking bureaucracy and hypocrisy—he reaches millions. His canceled magazine mirrors the fragility of free speech but also how culture builds collective awareness through humor.

Summary thought

Resistance in China isn’t always revolution—it’s persistence. When journalism, art, and satire overlap, they expand civic imagination. Creativity becomes not escape but engagement—a slow rewriting of moral order.

You see how dissent moves from physical protest to symbolic expression. In an age of ambition, art becomes both survival and subversion.

The Wenzhou train crash lays bare the moral cost of China’s speed. Infrastructure projects multiply, deadlines compress, and oversight collapses. Evan Osnos turns one tragedy into diagnosis for a system strained by its own success.

What went wrong

Lightning hits a flawed signal box, two trains collide, and the public explodes in outrage. Behind the technical failure stands Liu Zhijun, the railway minister who built a vast empire through bribes and pressure. Ding Shumiao, his intermediary, turns egg-selling into multimillion-dollar graft. The crash reveals how compressed timelines invite corruption and safety compromises.

Systemic patterns

Investigations uncover truncated bids and purchased posts (“maiguan”). Bureaucrats regulate and profit simultaneously. Removing one minister doesn’t change the structure—the pursuit of performance metrics overrides accountability. The result: modernization without moral modernization.

Lesson

Speed magnifies weakness. When progress outruns transparency, corruption becomes self-reinforcing. China’s high-speed miracle shows that growth measured in kilometers can’t substitute for trust measured in institutions.

You realize that the cost of acceleration is not just technical—it’s ethical. Recovery demands slowing down, not just tightening bolts.

A new public is born online. Cameras, hashtags, and viral empathy change how injustice spreads. Citizens evolve into reporters; the government adapts with legal and digital shields. Evan Osnos reads this as democratization of attention, not democracy itself.

Weibo politics

The Little Yueyue tragedy—seventeen bystanders ignoring a child hit by a van—becomes viral conscience. Public fury spawns new Good Samaritan laws. Chen Guangcheng’s sunglasses campaign transforms house arrest into mass gesture. You watch symbolic acts morph into civic language.

State counterresponse

The fifty-cent army—paid commentators—flood social media to steer tone. Legal codes criminalize “rumor-mongering.” The Party learns to divert rather than simply delete, practicing informational aikido—absorbing energy to reframe narrative.

Main takeaway

Online outrage grants moral voice but not institutional power. The state’s flexibility ensures stability even as its legitimacy erodes. The new public proves truth can emerge through pixels when paperwork fails.

This digital public sphere redefines civic participation—it’s noisy, emotional, partial, yet undeniably transformative.

Economic miracles raise expectations faster than systems can satisfy them. China’s youth, armed with degrees and smartphones, face an economy that feels locked by privilege. The “Age of Ambition” thus turns to the disappointment of meritocracy betrayed.

The Ant Tribes and diaosi class

Millions of graduates sleep in cramped quarters near Beijing’s universities—the so-called Ant Tribes. They represent oversupply of education versus undersupply of upward mobility. The “diaosi” term, a self-deprecating label for unlucky men without connections, captures humiliation turned humor. Housing prices and nepotism feed disillusionment.

Political implications

Inequality becomes legitimacy risk. The Party’s social bargain—prosperity for quiescence—depends on belief in fairness. As corruption and office-buying emerge, resentment rises. Unpublished Gini indices and viral scandals (Liu Zhijun, Bo Xilai) serve as empirical and moral symptoms.

Moral insight

Growth without fairness undermines dignity. China’s social compact now hinges less on improvement and more on belief—whether people still trust effort to matter.

The book closes this chapter with warning and empathy: the dream that once united a nation risks splitting along invisible class lines.

Amid skyscrapers and smartphones, China searches for soul. Evan Osnos ends with the moral vacuum left after decades of ideological erosion. The Party that once promised faith now tentatively sponsors morality plays, temples, and Confucius statues—hoping belief can coexist with control.

The Confucian comeback

Performances at the Confucius Temple and the global spread of Confucius Institutes signal a state-managed revival. Wu Zhiyou’s staged ceremonies offer harmony without introspection. Scholars like Li Ling protest that the Party cleanses Confucius of critique. You see revival as cultural scaffolding rather than spiritual return.

Religious resurgence

Christian house churches and Buddhist centers attract entrepreneurs and professionals. Zion Church’s Reverend Jin Mingri transforms faith into ethical community, while Wenzhou businessmen find Christianity a moral antidote to corruption. Religion migrates from underground to aspirational, though always under observation.

Reflection

The pursuit of meaning is China’s quiet revolution. Material modernity cannot replace conscience. Faith and philosophy fill the gaps where ambition leaves fatigue. The question remains—can spirituality thrive without full freedom?

In the end, Osnos reveals a society that conquers poverty yet wrestles with purpose—the final ambition is not wealth, but wisdom.