Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia [Hardcover]

Nicholas D. Kristof (Author), Sheryl Wudunn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2000

From two Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondents, a cutting-edge report on Asia and how its people are reshaping the world.

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn bring to their revelatory book all the authority and insight of the fourteen years they spent covering Asia. They depict a continent poised to reassume the role it ceded five hundred years ago as the "center of the world." They muster convincing evidence that China may soon overtake the United States as the world's largest economy, that India is awakening from its long hibernation, that Japan is developing future consumer technologies that will benefit millions of people.

Kristof and WuDunn tell their story through vivid descriptions of the unforgettable characters they have encountered: the Cambodian girl sold by her parents to a brothel; the bankrupted Thai entrepreneur who starts life anew with a street-vending business; the Japanese veteran haunted by the mother and child he killed in war. Through lives such as these, the authors underscore the pragmatism and perseverance that drive Koreans, Filipinos, Japanese, and their fellow Asians to greater success, to the point that many workers embrace the same sweatshops that horrify Westerners.

Thunder from the East shows that the rise of Asia paradoxically has been accelerated by the financial crisis that began to tear through the lives of multitudes in the East in 1997. The authors make clear that, by radically undermining the cronyism and the suffocating regulations that had long fettered Asian economies, the crisis liberated energies and creativity that had until then been immobilized.

Kristof and WuDunn avoid a Panglossian focus on Asia's strengths, for they also emphasize such shortcomings as discrimination against women, horrendous pollution, and the rise of nationalism. They warn that the rise of Asia will be a risky and tumultuous process, and that the emergence of powers like China and India will be in many ways destabilizing. New missile technologies and the rise of new nuclear powers in Asia pose a greater threat to American cities as well. Asia is, the authors warn, not only the most vibrant part of the world today, but also the most dangerous.

Thunder from the East is a brilliant guide to a region that is now in a position to wrest economic, diplomatic, and military power from the West in the coming decades. It offers a riveting account of a continent that is fast becoming the focus of the world's attention.  

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists for The New York Times and authors of China Wakes, return with an eclectic collection of reportage from Asia. Thunder from the East lacks an overarching thesis, except perhaps the claim that Asia is an incredibly important part of the world whose influence will only grow in the 21st century. (Toward the end of the book, in an amusing speculation about the year 2040, the authors wonder about "the Indian landing on Mars, the Kim's Riceburger acquisition of McDonald's, and now this basketball loss" of the Americans to the Chinese in the Olympics.) Kristof and WuDunn are a husband-and-wife team who split up their writing duties; every chapter is individually bylined, with the exception of the jointly authored final one. They refuse to offer a grand unified theory of Asia, a region, they write, that is "a bit like the weather: so diverse that it is difficult to generalize about." Instead, they paint chapter-length portraits of various Asian subjects, and often in the first person. In an opening set of remarks, Kristof describes how he and WuDunn have lived in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and Japan: "Our experience across Asia was in the form that the Chinese call qingting dian shui, meaning the way a dragonfly skits superficially about the surface of a pond."

There's nothing superficial about their reporting--it probes deep and isn't afraid to draw large lessons. Kristof, for example, discusses how China and India's historic insularity have kept those two countries from achieving all they might--cases of "imperial understretch," he calls them, in a nice phrase--and suggests the United States may be entering a similar period. Thunder from the East sparkles with this kind of analysis: provocative, debatable, and worth thinking over. Its riches aren't apparent from a cursory examination, but only through a page-by-page reading. Those who make the effort will be glad they took the time. --John J. Miller

From Publishers Weekly

HAbout a third of the way through this eye-opening book, a 13-year-old Cambodian girl describes her mixed feelings about her parents, who sold her into prostitution to raise money for her now-deceased mother. "Mom was sick and needed money. I don't hate her," the girl says. This simple description of the awful choices faced by many of the participants in Asia's economic revolution is just one of the many devastating portrayals in this deftly woven and gracefully written book by a Pulitzer Prize-winning husband-and-wife team (authors of China Wakes) who were longtime Asia correspondents for the New York Times. Using individual lives to examine countries ranging from Japan to Singapore, Kristof and WuDunn convincingly argue that Asia's current economic crisis is just a blip in the continent's more-than-half-century ascent toward economic power. The crisis is "an imposed breather, a forced opportunity to recuperate and regroup." And instead of viewing this growth with fear and hostility, as many authors have previously, Kristof and WuDunn approach it with curiosity. Part history, part anthropology and part journalism, the book describes the factorsDmainly isolationism and bloated bureaucracyDthat held Asia back and helped Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries and how these factors continue to prevent some countries, whether Malaysia or India, from reaching their full economic potential. Nor do they shy away from the difficult questions posed by globalization and expansion. They describe an Indonesian woman who speaks glowingly about the possibility of her son working some day in a local sweatshop: it would be a step up from her employmentD trawling through a local dump. Despite these obstacles, the authors believe that the entrepreneurial spirit of Asians like Sirivat Voravetvuthikun, who launched his own sandwich stand in Bangkok, provide evidence of their optimism: "[T]he center of the world may be shifting... and eventually it will settle in Asia." Whether the reader agrees with them or not, images of Sirivat and the others will remain with the reader long after this gem of a book is placed back on the shelf. 66 b&w photos. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1ST edition (September 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375403256
• ISBN-13: 978-0375403255
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,117,355 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The sequel is never as good as the original, April 13, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia (Paperback)

While I didn't find this book as edifying as "China Wakes," it's still a good read. Its greatest strength is the vignette format, with anecdotes, history, and statistics from various countries in the region and chapters divided by topic. The authors admit, rightfully, that with the breadth of territory they cover in this book the treatment is bound to be superficial to some degree, but it makes for a much more engaging read for someone interested in Asian studies in a broad sense, rather than the usual academic "fine-toothed-comb" treatment of a narrow topic. Their writing style is nonacademic, which is both highly engaging and very refreshing, and helps this book to appeal to a wide audience, not just ivory-tower types.

There are a few problems with the book, which can take something away from its enjoyability. First, there is a tremendous amount of editorializing. The authors may have felt this was necessary to tie together the disjunctive stories and histories they discuss, but I have a firm belief that the intelligence of the reader and the topic-as-chapter format would have made a much better tie than so much author opinion. That excessive editorializing and the overuse of "the upshot is" to explain things to the reader detracts from the maturity of the writing style. Additionally, the writers obviously consider themselves much more well-versed in Asia-related topics than most Americans. This is fine, but at certain points in the book the reader can't help but think that the authors mistake Americans for idiots. They assert, for example, that most people think of pastoral rice-paddy scenes, and not urban overcrowding, when they think of Asia. Who thinks that? I don't know anyone who doesn't tie overpopulation with India and China! Another example is when the authors assert (more than once) that people perceive Indonesia as stable. Who are these people? Most people I know, in wake of the East Timor situation (not the Bali bombing, since this book was published in '01) and religious/ethnic rioting in that country think of Indonesia as anything BUT stable. These weaknesses combine to give the reader a sense of being pandered to at times--a certain attitude of condescension, if you will.

Overall, this is a good book. It's great for people not well-versed in Asian studies, because it's broad enough to give people an easy-to-read introduction to the region (with both strengths and weaknesses presented). It's also good, however, for people who ARE heavily involved in Asian studies readings, since most of us in academia don't get many chances like this to venture out of our chosen country/culture of study and view the region as a larger whole.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Survey of Asia, January 2, 2001

By 

J. Michael Gallipo (Portsmouth, NH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia (Hardcover)

Mr. Kristoff and Ms. WuDunn have written a very interesting and engaging book about one of the most important areas of the world. The strength and weakness of the book derives from the authors' close contact with average people in the areas the write about. This puts a wonderfully human face on an area that for too many Americans becomes a faceless mass of statistics. But sometimes I think the authors are too quick to jump from anecdote to larger societal truth.

I found some of the early history of the region especially fascinating having never been exposed to that before. Like the authors, I spent time afterward thinking about what might have been had China not destroyed its 15th century navy. It is a useful counterpoint to the common argument that the triumph of the West over the past several centuries was inevitable.

The book also provides many good insights into Asia's potential for the future. I was also impressed that the authors seemed very cognizant of the limits of their predictive powers and often pointed the wide variety of things that could happen to change their overall outlook. I would recommend this book for all but the most serious scholars of Asia.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A way to understand the growing power of Asia, January 1, 2001

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia (Hardcover)

My college chemistry professor, a man of Chinese descent who grew up in the Philippines and was a young boy during the Japanese occupation, once told me that Asians were the most ethnically biased people you could find. Furthermore, he added that one could not understand the politics of the region or presuppose to predict the future in that part of the world unless that fact was kept foremost in mind. Nearly all of the ethnic hostilities between groups such as the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese predate the formation of the United States and some the founding of the modern nation states of Europe. Given these complex histories, any attempt to project what will happen in that region would seem to be a foolish exercise.
However, there are times when megatrends make predictions easy and that is the case here. The projections made in this book concerning the major forces driving Asia are too obvious to be wrong. Shed of stifling ideologies such as Communism or socialism, most countries in Asia, but particularly the massive countries of China and India are revamping their economies and growing at impressive rates. It seems clear that if these two can successfully manage their internal ethnic diversity and hostilities, they will be the two global economic powerhouses of the late 21st century. In fact, it is argued, correctly but not too strongly that the major superpower rivalry of the next decade will be between India and China. The emphasis for decades has been the rivalry between India and Pakistan, which is even more dangerous, given the potential for nuclear conflict. However, with the current and clear future differences in population and economic growth, Pakistan could soon be a dwarf when compared to its powerful neighbor.
The forces driving this economic boom are simple, a change in mindset and a growing population. As the authors so correctly point out, China was the global superpower for centuries while the Europeans were immersed in the ignorance of the middle ages. In retrospect, it is amazing that most of the world does not speak Chinese. With a mighty navy consisting of more ships than the west could put together until the 20th century, China had the capability to dominate the Pacific and Indian oceans. However, the scholarly class ordered the navy dismantled and all records of their voyages destroyed. This retreat into isolation was the main event that turned a mighty nation into a weak and backward one. The elimination of this insular mentality is the primary reason that China is growing powerful again.
The economic crises that engulfed Asia in the few years of the twentieth century actually did more good than harm. In traveling through the region, the authors document clearly that it served as the impetus for a restricted but general overhaul of some of the remaining archaic and inefficient economic structures. Given that so many thought that Japan Inc. would dominate the 21st century instead of being in what appears to be permanent recession, predictions are naturally suspect. However, the opinions of the authors are based on extensive travels and observations rather than skewed views from afar.
One very strong aspect of the book is that the authors avoid the descent into moralizing. When describing how parents and grandparents sell their early teen girls into prostitution, it would have been easy for them to climb the moral high ground. However, they use it as an example to describe the incredible tenacity and pragmatism of the peasantry as they attempt to improve their lives. If the sale of a daughter allows them to educate one of their children, then this generation will be the first to have an educated child with the prospect of advancement. A brutal choice to be sure, but one that does lead to substantial economic growth.
A close second to this is the interviews with the Chinese prostitutes who have taken over the trade in areas of Japan. Operating under a strict set of rules of behavior, they could give lessons to most companies about customer relationship management. At first, it is surprising to learn that the prostitutes are in fact well educated and are earning money so that they can continue their education. After some thought, it makes sense, in that sophisticated business people, the main clientele, would have little desire for a tryst with an illiterate, uneducated woman.
Unless there is a major war involving nuclear weapons or destruction on a par with that caused by nuclear weapons, the 21st century will see a shift of economic and political power from North America and Europe to South and East Asia. To profit from it, you must understand the movement at the lower levels of those societies and this book will help you do that.