A superb and intricate analysis of the power struggles between competing capitalist factions within China's strategic soybean complex over 40 years. It examines the way these factions strategize, build alliances and mobilize sectors of the state to defend and promote their interests. The reader sees how with each new policy cycle, soybean processors, importers and transnationals moved their pieces on the chessboard. The book takes us through the pressures of rising and declining sectors outside and within the state to explain the ultimate rise of COFCO, the globalized giant. Along the way, Fares answers fundamental questions about Chinese capitalism. A tour de force! A must read!

Leandro Vergara-Camus, Associate Professor of Economy and Social Innovation, Université de l'Ontario français, Canada

Fares has brilliantly retold the familiar 'story of soybeans', in which reformist China lost sovereignty over its soybean complex to capitalist multinationals, shifting from a net exporter to dependence on the international market. For the first time, this case of China's globalized agribusiness is used to examine the mutation of the Chinese state itself, empirically grounded in splendid sources and theoretically erudite within the Marxist tradition. The conception of a supposedly monolithic power as a contested space is consequential. One need not agree with his diagnosis to recognize the value of this compelling work.

Lin Chun, Emeritus Professor of Comparative Politics, London School of Economics, UK