It is not often that I am so disappointed by a book purchase. Had I actually been able to thumb through it, I most certainly would not have bought it.This is a book of big print and small ideas. White space and empty pages pad the number of pages from less than 100 to nearly 300. Of these, 10 pages are given over to glossy photos of Party leaders accompanied by vacuous comments.
Indeed, the entire book reminds me of the sort of barren tracts published by China's official printers. It is full of anecdotes and homilies that are poor substitutes for their lack of analysis.
There is a sense that the authors know that there are problems with the Chinese economy. But they offer no sensible analytical framework to understand them or to resolve them.
While dancing around the issue of China's state-owned enterprises, they never seem to understand that most cannot be mended, they must be ended. If not, continued expenditures on them will destroy yet more of the hard-earned savings of China's citizens and destroy opportunities to create new wealth.
Their lack of candor could be put down to ignorance or knowledge that the Chinese government does not appreciate strong criticism. However, the bios on the authors suggests that they may suffer from a conflict of interest. They are consultants on restructuring of these state-owned enterprises.
Even the production of the book disappoints. My copy had pages that were uncut and others were printed unevenly. There is no bibliography. A more grievous sin is the lack of an index, itself a simple matter with any word processing package. But with a book that offers so little substance, I suppose these are of no great concern.
