China Road: A Journey Into the Future of a Rising Power

I am very glad that I read China Road before the recent earthquake because the background that the book gave me on Chinese culture and politics has helped me better understand the news coverage of the disaster. This is the mark of a book that is truly worth reading, in that it helps the reader deduce meaning from world events. The premise and structure of the book are appealing. The author, Rob Gifford, an American journalist, hitchhikes across China on Route 312, China's equivalent of the US's Route 66, and writes about the places he visits and the people he meets. Along the way, he muses about China's history, its current building boom, its social structures and traditions, its problems related to its emergence as a global economy and its likely future as a world power. This makes for fascinating reading and, certainly for me, an entertaining way of getting to know a nation and a people who are increasingly affecting the lives of everyone on Earth. As soon as I heard about the collapse of school buildings in the poorer provinces of China during last month's earthquake, I realized that many parents would have just lost their only child due to China's one-child policy. This, it seemed to me, would be one of the things more likely to create the kind of anger and dissatisfaction that the government will be unable to buy off by putting more consumer goods into the hands of China's growing middle-class. Sure enough. The news continues to be full of stories about the anger and resentment felt by many lower middle class parents whose children died in poorly constructed schools while the children of the wealthy survived because they attended well-built schools that did not fall during the quake. Some of the devastated schools stood right next to others that were barely scratched. That is exactly the type of situation that Gifford warns about in China Road -- an event that exposes the corruption of local governments, the results of which are so heinous that the people refuse to be appeased by more stuff. Through reading China Road, I also came to better understand the conflict surrounding what is called Greater Tibet, some of which is actually a part of traditional China, and now see that the situation there is not quite as black and white as I once thought. By the time Gifford reached the end of his tale of Route 312, I felt as though I had received a solid tutorial on a country that I had once only the most rudimentary knowledge about, and I was sorry to see the end of the road. Highly recommended.

China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power I am reading some books recently (to name a few, the China Road, Collapse)... I like Rob Gifford's book China Road very much. It is very interesting to read, and offers a great angle to analyze the real problems and hopes of China. Let me tell you why I love this book. The Idea The idea behind the book is to take a journey along the China State Road No. 312 from Shanghai to north-west border of China. This idea itself is attractive. What is road 312, or G312 (G means Guo or State)? It is a road starting from Shanghai, cross the mainland of China, and travels along many provinces like Anhui, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Xinjiang... It is something like the mother road Route 66 in the United States. It is a long road. It is 4825 km long, and the diversity in both natural and social scene is huge enough for anyone who are willing to understand more about China. The idea is appealing to me as well. Maybe one day I should also take the trip of G312 to know China - I never claim I know China. I only know part of it, and I, myself, was often shocked by some facts I found out about China. In this sense, Rob knows China much better than I do. The Trip During the trip, Rob didn't just completed the trip - he explored deep inside. He visited places normal people live and normal travelers don't go. He talks with people who are saying something very familiar to me. He visited "dangerous" and "sensitive" places like Shangcai (I didn't make typo here. It is letter "c", not "h") in Henan Province, the AIDS village under the pressure of the local police... The trip was amazing, and I pleasantly followed his article to travel with him. The Thinking It is definitely not just a travelogue. It is a book full of his thought, not just observation. Let me just mention few of them. In Shanghai, Rob noticed the difference of two party members. One still believe Communism is the future, while the other (I am like her) don't believe it. I laughed since it is common discussion I heard in my daily life. Like in Xi'an, he thought about the question why China don't have its own Runnymede or Magna Carta. He thought it was rooted to the unification of the country in 221 B.C. when Qin (Chin) unified the whole country, by force. (I didn't repeat the whole story, but I think you can find out more). After his trip, he event thought about the China's history in a while, and claiming that the country is going through circles: China's history has only ever been about uniting and then collapsing, reuniting and then being invaded, overthrow, collapse, reuniting and collapsing again. Why should the future be any different? -Rob, Page 276, A road is made, China Road He then list some reasons why the future of China can be different... My Thoughts I appreciate Rob's thoughts, and his effort to report what China is today, and try to predict (although it is one of the hardest thing to do in the world) its future. The

I bought it and read 100 pages in one two-hour sitting! What I really appreciated about this book is the interweaving of China's past with its present. How can we understand the China of today if we don't fully appreciate its past? The author does a superb job of this. I can tell you that his insights and the experiences he had with Chinese citizens on his trip are completely and totally in synch with what I hear from my Chinese friends and colleagues. If you want to understand China, read this book!

Gifford spent about 20 years living and studying in China, and also speaks and reads Mandarin. "China Road" summarizes his two trips taking about 12 weeks across that nation on Route 312 - its Route 66 equivalent running about 3,000 miles from Shanghai to the border with Kazakhstan. Besides providing a physical description of the road, travelers and sights, "China Road" goes much further - summarizing the opinions of its workers, officials, travelers and other citizens, and offering well-grounded historical insights into China's history that help explain its national "psyche." Gifford begins in Shanghai, telling us of its 13 million population, 300 miles of elevated roadway, world's fastest train (reaching 270 mph over its 20 mile course), world's tallest hotel building, and a phenomenal rate of growth. (The World Bank says China has lifted 400 million out of poverty since 1978 - greater than the entire population of South America.) On the other hand, we also learn that the rural population has received little of these new benefits - in fact, that population is constantly presenting the central government with thousands of "mini-uprisings" - despite the fact that the ringleaders typically end up in jail for an indeterminate length of time. Complaints include overbearing taxes, officials displacing farmers from their land in favor of developers (pay higher taxes), corruption, and little or no free education and health care. Government malfeasance in one rural area also led to a major AIDs/HIV outbreak associated with contaminated blood-collections that infected both donors and recipients. And the "one-child" family is sometimes brutally enforced if a woman becomes pregnant with a third child. We also learn that China is an amalgam of some 56 recognized ethnic groups, as well as 400+ others. Thus, its variety of cultures, languages, etc. require a strong leader - a lesson Americans should take to heart in various situations. Gifford pushes the point, wondering if China is better off without democracy - its economic growth now greatly exceeds that in India, though India did avoid the horrible mistakes of Mao and his immediate successors. (Gifford also reminds readers that Russia's experiment with democracy did not end well, nor has China succeeded with anything in that direction previously.) Regardless, one way China attempts to integrate these various groups is to offer top ethnic-group students free schooling in its traditional Eastern Chinese schools. Further, it is also clear that the Chinese government has to run as fast as it can to manage the economic and other needs of its huge and growing population. Pollution and water shortages are growing problems for China, as well as accessing sufficient energy sources to power its needs for economic growth. China previously has suffered greatly at the hands of the Japanese, and its efforts now to modernize, and strengthen its armed forces can reasonably be explained as an outgrowth of

Following the "silk road" is an adventure in itself, and one covered extremely well in other travel books, but here Rob Gifford is cutting across China with one underlying question: Where is China heading? The answers are a little bit scary. As we travel with Gifford (what a great travel partner he'd make!) we meet many people who show by turn resilience, entrepreneurship but also something a lot more desperate: an element that has been described elsewhere not so much as 'dog eat dog' but 'man eat man'. The writing here is attractive, and often very entertaining, but the picture that Gifford reports isn't always a pretty one. With the world's biggest economy ballooning as it is, there's still a burgeoning, clambering desperation among the poor to get onto the ladder before the opportunities elude them. In some of the poorer, more remote areas, this fact - one can readily see, is already causing sad social consequences. There's a tone of fascinating regret here: a question about whether the price of progress is always worth it. Well recommended.