Book review: little emperors and material girls: sex and youth in modern China

Little Emperors and Material Girls discusses the sexual behaviour of young women in Beijing and Shanghai, and tries to draw parallels to the West. In order to deal with the lack of official statistics, Steinfeld, who worked in China as a journalist for many years, relies on interviews and personal observations. Whilst compulsively readable and entertaining, the book falls short of producing an entirely authoritative text, writes Isabel López Ruiz.