27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Trying to change the mainstream paradigm on China, March 28, 2007
This review is from: The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression (Hardcover)
At first glance, "China Fantasy" by James Mann is just another line of a lengthy string of books since the mid-1990s ("China Dream; Coming Collapse of China; Coming Conflict with China"; etc etc) expressing Western concern about where the rapid changes in China are leading it. However, the strength of The China Fantasy is that it breaks with mainstream tradition in important ways.
Firstly, China hawks since the mid-1990s have traditionally come from the Right wing, aligned closely with neoconservatism, and driven primarily by security threat perception to an extent, in my opinion, which has always been exaggerated, but whose excesses led to the persecution of a Taiwanese American scientist toward the end of the decade (and created a fearful political climate for Chinese Americans). Others may feel that those fears were justified. Personally, it is a pleasant surprise to see a China expert who passionately opposes the Chinese government on the grounds of its human rights atrocities, and who reaches out to both political parties in the US (if anything, Mann's focus is more leftish). Mann has seized a certain moral high ground for the China hawks taken straight from the post-Tiananmen spirit.
Secondly and even more importantly, Mann presents a genuinely new idea from the perspective of the mainstream media of the past decade, an idea whose time has come: the possibility that China may continue to prosper, but fail to democratize its political system, and that the growing middle class which is seen as a force for democracy may become a force against it. With nearly twenty years having passed since Tiananmen, every day that passes which sees the repressive Chinese regime failing to change its ways further weakens the argument of those who adhere to the 'Soothing Scenario'; it is, like Mann argues, a scenario that cannot be disproven until it is too late. In addition, Mann ties liberal criticisms of globalization squarely in China policy, presenting it as the central consequence of the status quo by pointing out how wealthier 'classes' in the US and China, by use of misleading rhetoric on one hand and brute force on the other, support economic policies that benefit them at the expense of the many. This too is an important thesis that has not gotten much attention.
Although The China Fantasy mainly asks a predictive question that brings out the social scientist in the reader, this is a deliberately political tract, designed to shock or persuade the reader out of an ill-justified complacency. Thus, it should be taken with a great of salt, as I feel even Mann himself would probably agree; there are parts of the book where he as a China expert should have known where to qualify a statement but he did not (for example, in defining the Cultural Revolution as lasting from 1966-76).
My biggest criticism of this book is that Mann could have spent just a little less time going after superficial rhetoric and just a little more time supporting his main thesis: that China could continue to prosper economically without democratizing. Ironically, at one point Mann implies that people who argue that the Chinese do not want democracy have a bigoted attitude because people in almost every other country seem to want it; but Mann is arguing that the Chinese will not democratize even if they become wealthy when people in almost every other country have. By his own standards, is this not just as bigoted?
Nonetheless, Mann's prediction will prove correct if no one takes any concrete action to alter the status quo. I still believe that China will eventually democratize, but Mann reminds us of the Marxist fallacy that 'history' equals inevitability, a fallacy that many who adhere to the so-called 'Soothing Scenario' implicitly seem to have fallen into. Democracy in China will *not* happen if people, including Americans, simply play a waiting game until it magically does. Yes, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 when no one would have predicted it two years earlier. But it may not have happened without movements like Solidarity, or Radio Free Europe, or Reagan's high-minded diplomacy at the Berlin Wall and with General Secretary Gorbachev; none of which have current parallels with China. Right or wrong in its prediction, Mann's book deserves a read.
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Concise and persuasive, April 22, 2007
This review is from: The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression (Hardcover)
"The China Fantasy" by James Mann succeeds in thoroughly debunking the widely-held view that capitalism will inevitably bring democracy to China. Providing a brief historical account of U.S.-Chinese relations from the Nixon administration to the present, Mr. Mann makes clear that business opportunism has driven the agenda at the expense of human rights and democracy in both countries. Mr. Mann's decades of subject matter expertise have prepared him to present a concise and persuasive work on an important topic that should be widely read and discussed by policy makers and concerned citizens alike.
Mr. Mann's specific focus is on the public relations aspect of U.S.-Chinese relations. Mr. Mann contends that a succession of business-friendly politicians have sold the American public on what he calls the 'soothing scenario', or the prospect of a democracy that will somehow emerge as a result of China's deepening economic ties with the West. Mr. Mann explains that this rubric has provided cover for high-ranking U.S. officials who have often used their connections to smooth the way for multinational corporations to set up shop in China in order to exploit its abundant supply of cheap labor. However, Mr. Mann provides a number of counter arguments explaining why the soothing scenario is a highly problematic proposition, with perhaps the most persuasive point being that democracy could allow the masses of destitute Chinese peasants to easily undo the privileges that the relatively small Chinese upper and middle classes have enjoyed under the protection of the single-party system.
Mr. Mann alerts us to the importance of demanding China to enact democratic reforms sooner rather than later, when the Chinese economy might become too strong for outside influence to have any effect. Declining U.S. wages and plant closures caused by increased competition with repressed Chinese labor is but one well-known problem; the Chinese government's support of authoritarian regimes in other countries so that it can propagandize to its domestic audience is a lesser-known but perhaps more serious issue. While one would be hard pressed to detect a political bias in Mr. Mann's writing, the implicit lesson that capitalism can be wholly congruous with governmental repression serves to rebuke free-marketeers such as Thomas Friedman and provides grist for those who may be critical of globalization.
Interestingly, Mr. Mann makes a series of short-range predictions about how the media might frame its coverage of the 2008 Olympic games to be held in China. Mr. Mann believes that on the one hand, superficial news coverage will intend to pacify Western audiences while on the other hand, nationalistic themes will serve to paper over the reality of growing inequality on the Chinese mainland. The author also suspects that China will assuage the West with hints of reform that will probably never materialize while cynically parlaying its moment in the world spotlight to attract renewed rounds of investment.
I highly recommend this timely, insightful and important book to everyone.
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
china in american eyes..., March 19, 2007
This review is from: The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression (Hardcover)
jim mann has written a clear-eyed analysis of american perspectives, in their various hues, on china, all of which tend to excuse beijing's record of repression and authoritarianism. while the self-interest of investors and the timidity of the american political establishment - republican and democratic both - have not only tolerated but sought to excuse chinese gross abuse of human rights and freedoms, mann's book systematically peels away the rationales, excuses, willful ignorances, and tacit acceptance of china's conduct. he also demolishes the self-delusions of many leading columnists who are burdened by a fatuous belief in the inevitability of democracy's rise in china, a belief based as much on their ignorance as their naivete about china. building on his earlier book, "about face," mann challenges american policy makers and investors (for example google and yahoo, which have acceded to demands of china's secret police for users' data and the censoring of their websites) to bring the same standards of international behavior that they demand of the rest of the world to the leadership in beijing. this is an important book.
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