| China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know |  | Author: Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
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Sales Rank: 32,875
Media: Paperback
Pages: 192
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Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 0195394127
Dewey Decimal Number: 951.06
EAN: 9780195394122
ASIN: 0195394127
Publication Date: April 16, 2010
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Product Description
The need to understand this global giant has never been more pressing: China is constantly in the news, yet conflicting impressions abound. Within one generation, China has transformed from an impoverished, repressive state into an economic and political powerhouse. In China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, Jeffrey Wasserstrom provides cogent answers to the most urgent questions regarding the newest superpower and offers a framework for understanding its meteoric rise.
Focusing his answers through the historical legacies--Western and Japanese imperialism, the Mao era, and the massacre near Tiananmen Square--that largely define China's present-day trajectory, Wasserstrom introduces readers to the Chinese Communist Party, the building boom in Shanghai, and the environmental fall-out of rapid Chinese industrialization. He also explains unique aspects of Chinese culture such as the one-child policy, and provides insight into how Chinese view Americans.
Wasserstrom reveals that China today shares many traits with other industrialized nations during their periods of development, in particular the United States during its rapid industrialization in the 19th century. Finally, he provides guidance on the ways we can expect China to act in the future vis-à-vis the United States, Russia, India, and its East Asian neighbors.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Guide for the Perplexed...on China April 27, 2010
Adam Daniel Mezei (Prague, Czech Republic)
14 out of 17 found this review helpful
I've long-admired Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom's China writings for the way in which this author succeeds in making the country's more obscure bits that much clearer for the novice China enthusiast or budding Sinologist.
Rather than further mystify the country's infamous "exoticness" to Westerners and cast his readers further into doubt in copping to that most annoying of journalist/blogger catchalls like "if it's one thing for certain, nothing is ever what it appears to be in China and everything changes constantly," Wasserstrom distances himself from the usual scholarly bluster and navel-gazing by employing a novel Q&A approach in getting his book's premise across. China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know indeed attempts, as its title promises, to include just about everything anyone needs to know about China.
Leaving aside for the moment the discussion about the quality of the material to be found inside its covers or about Professor Wasserstrom's throw-down (though I love it!) that what you're about to read is "what everyone needs to know" about China, the book's written using concise, accessible, easy-to-digest paragraphs.
This Socratic technique alone places the book firmly into front-of-mind awareness for the novice China reader. Those finding themselves armed with only the most rudimentary of knowledge about that juggernaut nation to the East will walk away, as Wasserstrom surmises "...[knowing] a few more basic things about the people of the PRC than they did when they read its first pages." Old China Hands, too, might appreciate this book as a ready reference, and perhaps even those claiming "expert" status about the country will be pleasantly surprised to discover how the book challenges several of their rigorously-held assumptions. As for myself, someone who considers himself a novice in chinoisierie, it achieved its mission masterfully. At a compact 135pp, I agree with scholarly reviewer Susan Shirk who claimed that the book "...provides the essential knowledge that intelligent citizens need to have about China...[that] can be read in less time than it takes to fly from the U.S. to China!"
On to the Book's Structure:
Wasserstrom's strategy is evident from the get-go: China in the 21st Century has been bisected neatly into halves: China's "historical legacies" and its "present and future."
For those who aren't as interested in the PRC's pre-1949 legacy, skip on over to the work's second half to acquaint yourself with Wasserstrom's clever summaries about everything of note that's transpired in the country since the end of the Chinese Civil War, the milestone likely marking the beginning of the West's genuine interest in China's domestic affairs or its international relations.
Chapters are further segmented by individual questions, bearing passages that can be cited from independently of the book's other sections without affecting one's overall understanding of the work (the likely effort that went into ensuring this would indeed be possible must have been enormous).
Personally, however, I wouldn't go so far as to claim this book can be skimmed through with a flippant regard for chronology. For those whose knowledge of China is at the introductory phase, for best results I suggest starting on page one and reading straight through to the end. Advanced readers can get away with a more a la carte approach.
Note Taking:
Since the beginning of 2010, I've taken to scoring up all of my newly-purchased China books with notes and arrows. While this might sound more akin to a Jackson Pollack (pictured above) work of art, this new method (thanks to Tim Sanders for getting me started on this) has helped me to cement lessons learned within specific passages to make future referencing of works I enjoyed eminently simpler. Wasserstrom's Q&A format is conducive to this sort of note taking because his responses to his own questions are short enough to make my short notes relevant.
Vital Sections:
Specific questions that Wasserstrom poses resonated quite profoundly for me. I commended him for adding these, since they probably address the bulk of present Western misunderstanding about China, not to mention how such confusion contributes disproportionately to the immense vitriol certain Western circles continue harboring for the PRC and its leadership.
Page 72's "What is the real story of the Tiananmen Uprising?" was particularly good for those whose knowledge of the June 1989 tragedy has become slightly murky in the two decades since the event. To wit, here were my notes for that particular question (n.b. TAM = Tiananmen Square Massacre):
* the official Chinese position on TAM: "a counter-revolutionary riot."
* Westerners too often assume most (protestors) were crushed by the tanks, but automatic weapons caused many more TAM deaths.
* more protestors were slain in the streets alongside Tiananmen Square, than in the square itself, hence Wasserstrom's use of Tiananmen Uprising as opposed to Tiananmen Square Massacre.
* by the time TAM's protests became what they were, other groups had by then joined in the fray (egs. disaffected intellectuals, civil servants protesting corruption, disaffected workers upset with the status quo, not just students).
* there was an uprising with many slain in Sichuan's Chengdu also, not just in Beijing, but few people know this.
Or how about page 76's "What effect did the fall of other Communist governments have on China?" I paraphrased the author:
* the Yugoslavian breakup was a godsend to China's ideologues, if only to reinforce the notion that a post-Communist nation was that much more harmful to national independence than a Communist one.
Things get better on page 78's "How did China's rulers avoid falling prey to the `Leninist extinction?'"
* four factors are worth considering in seeking to understand the surprising longevity of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). I paraphrase Professor Wasserstrom again:
1. China's traditional restive groups have been co-opted into the CCP system since liusi (i.e. TAM): entrepreneurs are now part of the ruling structure, intellectuals have access to previously-banned works, and students no longer have their academic lives micromanaged as in the past.
2. patriotic education has become a mainstay: the CCP is intent on educating the population that without the CCP, China will fall into pre-1949 disrepair and be once again occupied by imperialist powers.
3. the standard of living has been drastically raised and consumer goods are plentiful in all of the country's main urban centers. The people are no longer left wanting for things.
4. protests, far from being banned outright, are permitted within very limited contexts to permit Chinese society to blow off its steam. Factors that tend to tip protests from permitted into verboten territory are when they are a) multi-class, b) geographically widespread, and c) organized.
In the section entitled U.S.-China Misunderstandings, Wasserstrom moves onto a deft analysis of whether China is or is not a Big Brother state. Whether it takes on characteristics of Aldous Huxley's "soft" authoritarianism as depicted in the groundbreaking doomsday fiction Brave New World or does it instead embody characteristics more akin to George Orwell's 1984 and its version of a world gone dreadfully awry living up to Orwell's hellish version of "hard" authoritarianism?
I suggest you check out page 109's "Is China a Big Brother state?" to enjoy the answer.
Moving onto the book's final section entitled The Future -- which, if you ask me, makes the entire purchase worthwhile given how it depicts all manner of potentially hot button issues pertaining to China, its neighbors, and their relation to the rest of the planet -- page 116 has the author asking if China is indeed bent on world domination.
I wasn't altogether comfortable with Wasserstrom's bold claim on the following page that China has "no plan for world domination." Neither during the height of the proxy wars of the 1950s to the 1970s, and not today, he says, was this ever the case. Really? I noted in the margin, "how can he say this with a straight face?"
Furthermore, on page 118 he says:
The showcasing of military hardware during National Day parades can, in fact, be seen as being as much an effort to remind domestic audiences of the sophistication of the weaponry of the state as an effort to make an impact on foreign observers.
Plausible, sure. But does this necessarily lead to an even bolder claim that China has zero designs on world domination? Somehow I suspect the answer lies somewhere in between these two poles.
He next asks "How likely is a war with Taiwan?"
Wasserstrom doesn't address how likely war with Taiwan is, though he does posit two very valid reasons why Taiwan shouldn't fear reunification:
1. Economics influence politics. The two countries' close financial relationship have already established binding ties that would be very difficult to undo.
2. Hong Kong: the Special Autonomous city-state seems to be preserving its independence well. Would Taiwan be any different?
The PRC might even conceivably become a nation of "One Country, Three Systems," with China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan each making their respective contributions to minimize the likelihood of future conflict.
"Is China likely to become a democracy?" (p123).
Militating strongly against this eventuality is how diligently the PRC has been learning from the experiences of both Taiwan and South Korea as "...the CCP work[s] tirelessly to learn how to avoid precisely the[se] scenarios..."
And "What kind of government will China have in a decade?" (p125).
Probably the best way to describe PRC politics, says the author, is as a system of "adaptive authoritarianism." The CCP, he says, "...for better or for worse, has shown itself ready to experiment throughout its history, both before and after it seized national power," a factor which alone speaks strongly in favor of the Party's continuity into the future.
Summing Things Up:
China's Four Major Future Challenges:
Wasserstrom describes (given the CCP's penchant for numerical slogans, he says) China's Four E's: Economy, Environment, Energy, and Endemic Corruption, factors which can collide in the near future to capsize or possibly even deep-six CCP rule (p126).
On Economy:
Wasserstrom again:
"The regime has become both psychologically and practically dependent on high growth rates contributing to a general sense of optimism, which leads to a belief that, whatever its failings may be, the party remains legitimate because it is overseeing a period of impressive economic development and an overall rise in the living standards."
In other words, remove economic stability and all bets are off.
On Environment:
Notable inclusions in this section were (my notes):
* China suffers more than 4,000 mining deaths per year that amount to more than three-quarters of the globe's casualties for this sector.
* coal-burning electricity plants contribute to three-quarters of the PRC's electricity needs. This model works well provided coal remains a plentiful natural resource and the nation can continue affording to build new coal-fired plants each and every week, not to mention the suffocating greenhouse-gas effects.
On Energy:
China's desperate craving for oil stocks causes it to lavishly court regimes both in Africa and South America. China remains on permanently good relations with a very recalcitrant Iran.
On Endemic Corruption:
Wasserstrom writes that corruption remains China's Achilles heel. Corruption is the one things which can chronically undermine China's economic stability and lead to the outbreak of new TAM-style protests.
"How can the United States and China adjust to an era in which they are the two superpowers?" (p131)
Wasserstrom lists four distinct ways in which the U.S. and China are alarmingly similar:
1. Common industrial trajectories: China industrial development today strongly resembles the U.S. of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
2. Human rights: While Americans deride the PRC on its frequent violation of human rights, the U.S. remains one of the few countries which officially sanctions capital punishment. China too, for that matter. This, unlike the rest of the great powers.
3. Fiercely protecting oil stocks: The extent to which both the U.S. and China protect global oil stocks is astonishingly similar.
4. Treatment of minorities: Like it or not, both the U.S. and China have been the same in their treatment of (not necessarily in this order): Native peoples, Tibetans and/or Uighurs, and native Hawaiians.
Wasserstrom ends the book with an apt quote from Professor Stephen Mihm, who put it succinctly:
"...if we want to understand how to deal with China, we could do worse than look to our own history as a guide."
When Americans take the PRC to task for its misdeeds, says Mihm, a "bit of empathy might even be in order."
I couldn't agree more.
Less an apologia for the PRC's worst excesses, and dismissing just for the moment the fact that countries can even be excused for their most dastardly actions, almost people-like, Mihm's summation seems to be one of the stronger justifications to at the very least give China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know a fair shot.
Would you forfeit the chance to learn what everyone needs to know?
 Good Background, Though Rather Bland - April 14, 2010
Loyd E. Eskildson (Phoenix, AZ.)
13 out of 17 found this review helpful
"China in the 21st Century" provides a good background on China, though it is rather bland reading. In addition to providing background on China, Wasserstrom also addresses important issues (eg. "Is war likely over Taiwan?") in a even-handed manner. The author also brings appropriate focus - eg. reminding readers that even though intensively competitive, about 70% of its largest businesses are still state-owned. However, the book lacks any solid projections for the future - especially China's economics.
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