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This book is a detailed examination of reform in the writing of minority languages under the PRC, including the adaptation of languages to scripts never before used to write them. Considering how closely language is related to culture and society, this entails a good deal of treatment of issues such as PRC politics, external influences, such as from the Soviet Union and the West, the impact of modernization and factors like education and religion. Of course, there is quite a bit about China's spoken minority languages as well.The book is generally well written, though there are places where the language becomes dense and difficult to follow. The source material for the book is four summers of fieldwork in China's minority areas (1997–2000) and a vast amount of printed material. The list of references takes up no less than 40 pages (pp. 407–446). All items are in Chinese or English. The author makes judicious use of this array of material to mould his own viewpoints on specific issues.My only real problem with this book as a work of scholarship is the lack of clarity in the aims and central argument. The introduction gives extensive historical background on China's ethnic relations and policies, including in the PRC. It also forecasts the topics of the individual chapters, concluding with the author's hope that China's experiences in multilingualism will “facilitate the maintenance and development of minority languages in the world community” (p. 35). The conclusion summarizes answers to some of the crucial questions the book tackles, and again returns to the hope that the Chinese experience will be of use to the world as a whole.

There are 13 nationalities currently dwelling within the boundaries of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), China's most westerly and largest unit at provincial level. The most populous nationality is the Uygur, a Turkic people, who at the end of 1982 numbered about 5,986,800 out of Xinjiang's total population of 13,159,000. Others include the Han, at 5,287,000 people, the Kazakhs (913,900), the Hui (575,500), the Mongolians (117,200), the Kirghiz (114,200), the Xibo (27,500), and Tajiks (27,100).

The theatrical life of the Chinese in recent years has closely reflected the evolution of Chinese society as a whole since the Cultural Revolution. Although the ninth Party Congress in April 1969 confirmed the success of the Maoist line established in the Cultural Revolution, deciding exactly how to apply that ideological system has not always been easy. Debate has continued in all sections of the community, and is reflected very clearly in the newspapers and media. Amid these debates enough concrete decisions have been reached to begin new cultural activity, largely suspended while the issues were being thrashed out during the Cultural Revolution, and with the passing of time the pace of the revival in the arts has quickened. The resurgence is based on Maoist theory, and it may conseqeuntly be useful to begin with a discussion of how the Chinese are formulating their ideas on what the theatre is all about.