Mr. China tells the rollicking story of a young man who goes to China with the misguided notion that he will help bring the Chinese into the modern world, only to be schooled by the most resourceful and creative operators he would ever meet. Part memoir, part parable, Mr. China is one man’s coming-of-age story where he learns to respect and admire the nation he sought to conquer.

中国先生讲述的是一个年轻的老外，原本想去中国这块他认为落后的地方，将世界现代化的知识带给中国。没想到他被中国的现代化震撼了，自己在中国学到了令其终生难忘的一课。

Despite the one-child policy, China’s population continues to grow. Meanwhile, rapid urbanisation threatens a reduction in the country’s cropland. Brown points out that a massive switch from the traditional Maoist policy of self-sufficiency in grain to a strategy involving large-scale food imports would tip the balance in world food markets. This short study raises more questions than it answers, but, as the title says, its function is to wake us up to the problem, and it certainly does just that.

China’s development is imperilled by environmental degradation and the reckless waste of natural resources. Smil’s second book on this subject examines the cost in terms of damage to the environment of the country’s rapid industrialisation, concentrating mainly on the implications of the huge increase in energy required for the process and on the problem of food security. The dismal prospect he sketches is one of continuing environmental deterioration in the first decade of this century, regardless of any action taken to prevent that happening, but Smil does suggest long-term actions which could prevent an even greater catastrophe in later years.

(Amazon) This timely book by Lardy explains: 1) the intermingling of China’s gradualist reform, the inefficiency of SOE and the evolving banking system; 2) the structure and practise of the banking system of China; 3) some of the implications of the looming financial crisis in China. It thus serves as a critical and timely piece for readers to gauge what has been wrong for China and why are the policy implications. There are a few points worth highlighting. First, the cost of the gradualist reform approach is the resulting inefficiency in SOE and the related banking crisis, a cost which is usually forgot in the debate on the pace of reform for emerging economy. Second, the relative size of SOE in China, despite all the measures to stimulate private sectors for the past two decades, is still large, particularly from the perspective of bank lending. This has been reducing the strength of the banks and limiting the availability of funds to private enterprises. Third, due to the lack of other forms of investment, Chinese banking system has absorbed most of the saving from the private sector. However, because of the fragile banking system, deposit rate has been politically controlled at a very low level. This is effective taxing the Chinese household and subsidising the borrowers, i.e. the inefficient SOE. Forth, related to the third point, liberalisation of capital market will post a serious threat to the banking system because it will take away the funding source from the banking system. Fifth, the Asian flu would post limited short term threat to the Chinese system primarily because it is still a closed system. However, long term implication is clear and the Chinese leaders are aware of the similarity of the Chinese symptoms to those of the Asian flu. The only problem from this reader perspective is the level of theoretical underpinning. The piece is full of details in most of the aspects it is addressing. The missing piece however is that it fails to put the banking crisis into a larger perspective of the transformation of socialist system. Although a full discussion in this aspect may perhaps require an entire book itself, a brief discussion seems appropriate given that Lardy commented on some of the more theoretical aspect of the study in Chapter 5. Read the rest of this entry »

(Amazon) Since I regularly read journals dealing with international business and manufacturing, I am aware of the trends. However, until I read this book, I had no idea how dramatic the rise in the economic power of the People’s Republic of China has been. From the figures in this book, it is clear that the phrase, “The cold war is over and the Chinese have won” is true. Current projections are that in less than two decades, the economy of the P. R. C. will surpass that of the United States. If the economic activity of the Chinese mercantile class living in other Asian nations is factored in, then the timeframe is even shorter.

In area after area, from clothing to toys to furniture, manufacturing is shifting to China. Even the traditional low cost countries such as Mexico, Haiti and Honduras are losing manufacturing jobs to China. The figures on the number of Mexican jobs that have been exported to China are amazing and disturbing. Many of the employment gains that Mexico expected to have due to the NAFTA accords have been lost to China. American jobs being lost to China is not surprising, but the movement of jobs throughout the entire Western Hemisphere indicates a global transfer of economic power.
This rise in economic power will lead to a corresponding increase in political and economic power. Many of those trends are also described, including some of the early responses by those who study U. S. national security. I was also impressed with the prescience of the Chinese leadership in their dealings with leaders in the United States. By adopting a policy of divide and conquer, they have been able to stave off attempts to restrict their activity. Since any attempt by the U. S. government to slow the expansion of P. R. C. involvement in one area will reduce the market opportunities of another group, every attempt to do so is quickly squashed. There is no better example than that on page 173, “With such strong internal support, it is no wonder that China can afford to spend less than desolate Malawi on paid U. S. lobbyists.” Read the rest of this entry »

The State of China Atlas – Stephanie Donald and Robert Benewick – 2005

This book is very useful for anyone studying Chinese demographics, sociology or development. It has a plethora of maps and statistics that will help to build an image in the eye of the reader of China’s developmental momentum, including its multitudinal problems.

However, be aware that the data is essentially a snapshot in time from surveys and data collected prior to publishing and this book’s usefulness will decline as new data becomes available. With the speed that China is developing, clearly this book will need to be republished every few years.

Just now, however, it is still a very worthy purchase to give you a better understanding of the internal and external state of China, as well as the trends and mechanics of this huge nation.

The True Story of Ah Q – Lu Xun – 1999

The Chinese communist party likes to claim Lu Xun as a precursor to later social critics who wrote along party lines. He definitely does not belong in that category. The cover of the English translation, published by the Foreign Languages Press Beijing,(not this edition) claims that his story, set in the China of 1911, reflects “the sharp class contradictions and the peasant masses’ demand for revolution”. Nothing could be farther from the truth. There are no peasants in Lu Xun’s story who demand a revolution. On the contrary, when revolution “arrives” in the towns, it is the officials of the crumbling Ming Dynasty in the village who try to jump on the new train first. The peasants are dumbfounded, but essentially, they do not care. Ah Q is a day laborer who lives on the odd jobs he gets from time to time in his small village. He is an optimistic, naive peasant inclined to turn his daily humiliations into imaginary “victories” When he commits the mistake of confessing his love to a lowly female employee in the household of a wealthy official by saying “sleep with me”, he is ostracised by the whole village and forced to steal in order to survive. Finally, he leaves the village. He returns as a man with money, and suddenly gains the respect of the villagers and the local officials. Later, however, he commits another mistake. He tells that he gained the money by selling stolen goods. In the end, he is executed because the officials decide that he has robbed the house of an official. Read the rest of this entry »

Books about China in 2008

(FEER) In this look back at some of the best accessible China books of 2008, just think of me as your personal Amazon.com, a bundler of titles that go well together.  For my approach here will not be the usual one of focusing on single works, but rather that of creating thematic pairs of books that are particularly effective when read together.

My pairs will be a bit more adventuresome than those often found on the real Amazon sites.  For example, I won’t suggest, as Amazon’s UK site does, that purchasers of former journalist Catherine Sampson’s latest whodunit, “The Slaughter Pavilion” (Macmillan), should also order the same author’s 2007 “Pool of Unease” (Macmillan), her first novel to include action set in the PRC, where she now lives.  Nor will I encourage, as Amazon.com does, purchasers of Michael Meyer’s “The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed” (Walker Books), an excellent book of reportage, should also pick up Leslie T. Chang’s “Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China” (Spiegel and Grau), about which the same thing can be said. Read the rest of this entry »

Book Review – Yu Hua – To Live: A Novel

The novel opens with a nameless first-person narrator telling the reader of his old job that consisted of traveling and collecting folksongs and old stories. The villagers were generally happy to see him and were completely willing to relay stories of their past days. Although he enjoyed their stories, the narrator had yet to find a person who could completely recreate his past. However, after he met an old farmer named Fugui who was busy plowing his fields and kindly coaxing his old ox to work, his desire was satiated.

In his younger days, like his father before him, Fugui had been the epitome of the prodigal son. Spending his days whoring and gambling, Fugui wasted huge amounts of money. However, it seems that he enjoyed himself, doing such things as riding a fat prostitute piggyback and ordering her to take him around town. His father was of course upset, but having been of a similar bent himself during his younger days, he did not protest too much. In the eyes of Jiazhen, his lovely, but pregnant, wife, his mother, and his little girl, Fengxia he could do no wrong. However, when a professional gambler named Long Er made the scene, things truly began to go bad. Fugui had at first been able to pay his debts on the spot, but eventually he had to put everything on credit that eventually resulted in him losing the family’s ancestral land to Long Er. Read the rest of this entry »

Book Review – Gavin Menzies – 1421: the year China discovered the world

In this outstanding book, retired submarine captain Gavin Menzies rewrites history and takes us on an epic adventure around the world in the company of huge Chinese fleets carrying soldiers, craftsmen and concubines.

Using a mixture of medieval maps and manuscripts, an in-depth and practical maritime knowledge, botanical evidence and sound reasoning, Menzies puts forward his theory that China, not Europe, discovered America, Australia, and the rest of the world – decades before Europeans set sail for distant seas.

In a rich and descriptive style, Menzies tells of the lives of the Emperor Zhu Di, who ordered the voyages of exploration, and of Admiral Zheng He, his friend and chief eunuch. He goes on to describes the huge treasure fleets and tracks their course across the face of the globe. At each landfall, Menzies gives evidence of the Chinese presence, delving into the folklore of the area’s inhabitants and noting the presence of Asian plants and chickens far from China’s shores, predating the first Europeans.

This book is a must for anyone interested in keeping up to date with the most recent historical discoveries. In one fell swoop, Menzies has turned the old idea that Europeans first discovered America and circumnavigated the globe on its head. The history books will have to re-written! Read the rest of this entry »