Alongside China's vast material development, there came a change of its mental habits, largely affected by the technological revolution in the means of mass communication. This book shows how such a change has brought — and yet been brought by — a new form of pictorial thought, essentially sensuous and imagery, which is suggesting a possible future for the world. Today's China is different from what it used to be; the Maoist years appear, even to the official mind, an absurdity; and this difference is evident in the replacement of the Maoist mass-politics by what should be called "Moral politics", which is petty and personal. It is the moralizing practice that characterizes today's China, when the birth of so-called "ordinary people", taken as a collection of individual authors of their own private lives and personal stories, became an acknowledged social fact, proliferating in all kinds of mass media.