26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Flat, fuzzy and flawed, October 25, 2003
There is not much positive that I can say about this compilation of dates, names and places. I found it uninspired and dull. After the enjoyable volume about India in the same series, this contribution was a real letdown.
For the most part, Mr. Haw wrote a political history of China with the obligatory excursions into Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism (and, I have to say, a very apt comparison of Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhism on page 87). Chinese literature is not mentioned in a single line - not even the world-class poetry of the Tang era. Apparently, the author wrote a "cultural history" of China before this book and incorporated part of it here. How can that be?
The condensation of about 3,600 years of Chinese civilization into 250 pages does not serve the subject well. Generalizations and vapid statements abound. Causes of developments are rarely explained, and more questions arise than are answered. For example when Haw writes about the south of China during the Song dynasty around AD 1000: "The south of China, formerly sparsely populated and poorly developed, had by this time advanced to a much higher economic level, largely as a result of considerable settlement by Chinese from the north."(113) Advanced, by what means? A much higher economic level, what is that exactly? What is "considerable"? Why does settlement advance an economy and how?
Economics are not the strength of Mr. Haw. Sometimes he misses obvious links - for example the interrelated economics of tea and opium in the Opium Wars, so well explained in Simon Winchester's "The River at the Center of the World." At other times he rehashes the babble of local Chinese newspapers, like the assertion that "China will almost certainly become the world's largest economy during the next decade."(248) I did the math when I heard this fairy tale for the first time while I worked in Shanghai. If China grows by 7% every year, and the US by 2.5%, China's GDP will reach 19% of the US GDP in 2010. In 2032, China will have reached 50% of the US GDP. Please send me an email to get the calculation on an EXCEL sheet if you don't believe the numbers.
The author seems a bit infatuated with Communist propaganda, too. The Tian An Men massacre is the "Tianan Men Incident" - it does not get any more politically correct in the PRC than this. Even more embarrassing is the fact that he trumpets the party line by saying that soldiers killed in self-defense ("it seems likely that troops were attacked with petrol bombs and possibly other weapons before they opened fire"(199)) and then sets off 400 killed civilians against "some 600 military fatalities" (199).
Another favorite idea of the Communist regime in China, which Mr. Haw parrots, is that "the general level of education in China is probably still too low for any genuinely democratic system to be successful: as many as a quarter of the population remain illiterate or semi-literate."(199) In reply to that I can say that there are democracies that continue to function even if more than HALF of the population do not participate in the process of voting, i.e. remain politically illiterate or semi-literate.
Finally, Mr. Haw is one awful storyteller. How can anyone NOT elaborate on a summary description like this: "In 1870 there was a dreadful incident in Tianjin, sparked off by the stupid behaviour of the French consul, as a result of which he and his assistant were murdered by a mob..."(170)? Give me the details, pleeeease!
To illustrate my point, here is the bland version of the Silk Road's impact on Rome (Stephen G. Haw, China, 2002: page 84): "The Silk Road, along which Chinese silks reached Rome, was the major channel of communication between the Far East and the West throughout the Han dynasty."
Here comes the spicy version: "The story of the western world's fascination with China dates back more than 2,000 years and it began with a product that still symbolizes the relationship - silk. The Chinese fabric spun into sensual, thin gauze first became familiar in Rome around 50 BC. Cleopatra, mistress of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and queen of Egypt, was among the first to promote a fashion for transparent dresses in the exotic fabric. Despite the outrage of sartorial conservatives - the writer Seneca railed against the wearing of such dresses in the Roman capital, 'clad in which no woman could honestly swear she is not naked' - by the end of the fourth century, silk was a universal accoutrement in civilized society throughout the empire." (Joe Studwell, The China Dream, 2003: page 3).
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Concise, but surprisingly thorough, July 16, 2000
Haw does what few writers have done when relating China's long and turbulent history: he presents short and precise background historical information, while at the same time, giving the reader a sense of the all encompassing ramifications of that history on present-day China. The early portion of the book does focus on the geographical aspect of China (and admittedly, this is not the most interesting part of the book);however, Haw reveals many of the historical and political turbulence that makes up such a vast nation in such a way that no other writers have done. Many books have been written about China, and many of these books are very detailed, and at times, pedantic. Haw, however, achieves in giving the reader in clear language a very succinct history that is understandable. Without doubt, this book is one of the better efforts written about China.
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