Monday, 19. March 2007, 00:17:13
Book Review, Political Economy
The China Fantasy by James Mann
Reviewed by Benjamin A Shobert
Asia Times
Mar 17, 2007Benjamin A. Shobert is the managing director of Teleos Inc (www.teleos-inc.com), a consulting firm dedicated to helping Asian businesses bring innovative technologies into the North American market.Children are raised to believe that no one likes a tattle-tale. As adults, this ingrained lesson subconsciously morphs into frustration with people who point out the difficulties and disconnects with ideas we find useful. As the stakes get greater, it becomes increasingly awkward for an outside observer to suggest problems with commonly accepted tactics and strategies. Nowhere is this more complicated than in geopolitical realms where economic incentives and social values collide; once-noble motives may be compromised as financial and political considerations take over.
Read more...
Thursday, 8. March 2007, 23:57:03
Book Review
AURORE MERLE
China Perspectives n°58Edward Gu et Merle Goldman (éds.), Chinese Intellectuals Between State and Market
This collective work, directed by two writers known for their work on China’s intellectuals , undertakes to bring together with the classic problem of intellectuals and the state in China a further key notion: the market. Has the introduction of market mechanisms to the Chinese intellectual sphere changed the relationship between intellectuals and the state in the post-Tian’anmen period? Has it been the source of greater autonomy for the intellectuals? To answer these questions, the book is divided into four parts.
Read more...
Tuesday, 27. February 2007, 23:51:15
China Watch, Book Review
Raymond Soong
EastSouthWestNorth
27 Feb 2007When General Administration of Press and Publications deputy director Wu Shulin allegedly announced that eight books were banned, they became compulsory reading material within the intellectual circles of China. There was no better publicity and endorsement, and one has to read all eight books in order to be au courant. One of these books Ruyan@SARS.com is being published in Hong Kong, and this edition features a foreword by Zhang Yihe (whose own Past Stories of Peking Opera Stars was also on that list of eight books). This makes a good example of cross-promotion and co-branding, except the friendship between the two authors goes way back before the current incident.
Read more...
Monday, 12. February 2007, 07:12:06
Book Review, Poverty
Review by Claude AUBERT
China Perspectives n°66
july - august 2006(Translated from the French original by Philip Liddell)
Cao Jinqing, China Along the Yellow River. Reflections on rural societyThis book is a partial translation of a Chinese best-seller published in September 2000[1]. It was one of the first in a series of books on rural China . They were very successful, and rightly so (one of the last being the famous Report on the Chinese Peasants by Chen Guili and Chun Tao[2]).
Read more...
Saturday, 3. February 2007, 00:14:08
Book Review, Politics
Jean-Louis ROCCA
China Perspectives n°66
july - august 2006Mary Gallagher’s book has twin objectives. On the one hand, it seeks to disclose the role of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the process of economic reform. On the other, it aims to challenge the thesis that economic liberalisation goes hand in hand with political democratisation. The first aim is convincingly realised. The writer asserts that foreign investors have begun by exercising competitive pressure on the regional authorities. In turn, the authorities have had to adopt reforms, particularly in terms of work legislation, to attract capital. The investors went on to build up a kind of laboratory of public policies, measures taken for the benefit of foreign investments being gradually extended to national enterprises. Lastly, they have brought about an ideological reformulation of the government, leading to the refocusing of attention on the “national property”. This emergent “state-led capitalist developmentalism” (Blecher) provides the tools necessary for making connections between capitalism and the interests of (national) society. Capitalism in the service of national... revolution.
Read more...
Friday, 2. February 2007, 23:57:27
Nationalism, Book Review
Gary D. Rawnsley
China Perspectives n°64
March - April 2006“This only is denied to God: the power to change the past” - Agathon
“Though God cannot alter the past, historians can” - Samuel Butler
I read China’s New Nationalism in one sitting having re-read Iris Chang’s Rape of Nanking (Penguin, 1997) the day before. Although a coincidence, my timing was fortunate. Peter Hays Gries’s superb survey of Chinese nationalism is an indispensable complement to the (not always fairly) criticised Chang. Gries’s discussion of Rape of Nanking helps readers to put the book in a context that is based on the history of Sino-Japanese relations and what appears as an unyielding struggle for status in Asia . He also discusses the academic community’s disapproval of Chang, and rushes to her defence by explaining: “Chang never claims to be a historian; she is a sincere young woman enraged by what she has learned about the atrocities of December 1937” (p. 84). However, instead of examining the details of the debate, Gries is more concerned with how what he refers to as “the Rape of Nanking sensation” provided “an opportunity for a public contest between Chinese and Japanese narratives of the past before a jury of Western opinion. Thus, two projects are intertwined in victimization narratives: quantifying the pain and presenting the Chinese case to the world” (Ibid.). The book’s research is driven by a desire to understand the origins of this narrative and explain why the discourse of humiliation contributes to Chinese self-identity, identification of “the other”, and ultimately the importance of nationalism in Chinese politics. This is a very recent development: Gries reveals that the discourse of humiliation—the narrative of victimization—challenges the heroic “victor narrative” of history that dominated the first three decades of post-revolutionary China .
Read more...
Tuesday, 30. January 2007, 06:48:51
PHILOSOPHY, Book Review, Ideology
The Scientifization of Culture: the Book
Essays by Wim RietdijkC.W. Rietdijk: The Scientifization of Culture,
with an Introduction by H.J. Eysenck,
Assen (Van Gorcum) 1994. 637 pp.
ISBN 90 232 2919 3. EU 43.10 / $ 57.50.
Every century has its few books which prove to be so innovative that their epochal value is only recognized by later generations. By challenging established opinions and vested interests these books often meet hostile criticism and may even be ignored in the media for their "political incorrectness". The Scientifization of Culture by the Dutch physicist Wim Rietdijk is one of these books.
From the Introduction by Hans J. Eysenck:"This book has great potential importance because it recognizes the essentially irrational nature of many of our social practices, and suggests that we should instead adapt the principles of science, of rationality, of enlightened self-interest in dealing with our problems - whether in education, crime prevention, industry, or whatever. This premise is worked out in great detail, relies to a considerable degree on established facts, and will for that very reason encounter violent, emotional and unreasoned opposition."
Eysenck concludes:
"This book takes issue with this outburst of insanity, absurdity, and egalitarianism, uncovers its many Hydra heads, and suggests the underlying causes. It is not necessary to agree with every detail; the author has well identified the target, and has suggested credible causes. The book is important because normally we don't mention these things; to do so would go against our most ingrained habits, and, worse, offend orthodoxy. Let us offend orthodoxy and rejoice that a lonely voice has found the courage to say: 'But the emperor has no clothes!'"Read more...
Saturday, 20. January 2007, 23:58:26
Book Review
By Kamila Shamsie
The Guardian
January 20, 2007The pithy elegance of Sid Smith's China Dreams impresses Kamila ShamsieChina Dreams
by Sid Smith
200pp, Picador, £12.99
China Dreams is the last in Sid Smith's China trilogy, which started with Something Like a House, winner of the Whitbread first novel award, and continued with A House By the River. At the time of the first novel's publication there was much chatter around the fact that an English writer had set a novel in China without ever having visited the country. It's a nice little twist, then, to see that the protagonist of the final book in the trilogy is an Englishman whose thoughts are consumed by China even though he's never been there.
Read more...
Monday, 8. January 2007, 00:17:03
Political Economy, Book Review
Will Hutton
The Guardian
January 8, 2007Will Hutton's The Writing on the Wall is published on January 18 at pounds 20.To the west, China is a waking economic giant, poised to dominate the world. But, argues Will Hutton in this extract from his new book, we have consistently exaggerated and misunderstood the threat - and the consequences could be grave Read more...
Sunday, 7. January 2007, 22:22:16
Book Review, Political Economy
By Will Hutton
The Observer
January 7, 2007An edited extract from The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century to be published by Little, Brown on 15 January, £20.In the last decade China has emerged as a powerful, resurgent economic force with the muscle to challenge America as the global superpower. But, in his controversial new book, Will Hutton argues that China's explosive economic reforms will create seismic tensions within the one-party authoritarian state and asks: can the centre hold?
Read more...
Showing posts 11 -
20 of 46.
WIDGETIZE