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 "...
Read more ›
