What Does China Think?

Writing a negative book review is much easier than writing a positive one. This is why I put off writing something nice for Mark Leonard's "What does China think" for so long. Why bother read my review, really? Just go and read the book! For those of you who are not into reading, the book is quite thin, though amazingly informative. If you are scratching your head for a China strategy for your business, but have not yet come up with one, this book is a "must read" assignment. Even if you are Chinese and/or well versed in current Chinese affairs, you will still find the book worthwhile. Instead of validating himself as a qualified voice on China, Mr. Leonard let the indigenous Chinese intellectuals speak to the Western audience through his book without tinting the content with Western bias. Acting as an intelligent mediator, he was able to highlight the insiders as well as the issues, that made up the crucial forces in powering the intricate Chinese policy machine. "Since the time when French and British missionaries first travelled to the East, the West has focused on what it wanted from China - and how to convert the Chinese to a Western way of life. People wrongly assumed that as China grew richer, it would also become more like us." Mr. Leonard states in his introduction. Too often, Western observers (intellectuals included) are too narcissistic and consumed with their own interpretations of the China phenomenon to investigate what the Chinese are thinking and saying. Meanwhile, the Western media is flooded with misrepresented information in tabloid on a country everyone is so eager to learn about and understand. This vicious cycle continues as ignorance spreads. Mr. Leonard's writing can hopefully pull some of these readers back to focus on original sources rather than speculations, as his book covers nearly all of the major political, social, and economical topics of China. From "green cat development" and "inner party democracy experiment" in an obscure Sichuan village to "Sino-Afro" relationships, the author examines each fascinating policy embryo with intensity and depth. For many of these embryos will one day develop into full blown forces, which will profoundly impact the way we live and do business. A word of caution, if you are not familiar with Chinese modern history, you might find reading this book hard going. Before you check out this book from the library, you might want to find a few companion books as reference. Enjoy the read!

In adding to my general knowledge base of modern Chinese politics and economics, I added Mark Leonard's book to my library based purely cover design. Nonetheless, the book is a easy read small gem in the wallop it packs in understanding the NewChina. The introductory statement "that without understanding China, it would be impossible to understand world politics," (pg. 8) is never more true than today. The author is adept in the comparison of Thomas Friedman's "flat world" of globalization to the China-created philosophy of a "Walled World" (pg. 18). The contrast is both enlightening and insightful. The zebra-horse allegory (pg. 23) was funny yet so true in the description of the methods used by China to change a state controlled economy to a market economy in the late 20th Century combined with the notion of incremental democracy or consultation with a new informed intellectual technocracy in party and government policy (pg. 67). The concept of Comprehensive National Power (pg. 83) is most interesting and how the Chinese think-tanks conducted case studies of rising nation state powers (pg. 90). Moreover, the Chinese cultural outreach (pg. 95) especially in African economic affairs is impressive. Several bona fide points were made by the author: 1] "that it is no longer axiomatic that liberal democracy as the necessary foundation for development," (pg. 96); 2] China has "developed a brand of 'listening diplomacy', contrasting to the multilateralism with American unilateralism," (pg. 97); the goal "is not to cut China off but rather to allow China to engage with the world on its own terms," (pg. 118); and, China "is determined to defend an older idea sovereignty, based around the sovereign rights of states," (pg. 128 and 132). This reader enjoyed the description of China's participation in multinational organizations of the so-called 'flat world' and advancing state capitialism and the market economy (horses-to-zebras) while making central communist party control more fashionable domestically and internationally.

Mark Leonard's desultory ramble through China's intellectual landscape introduces that country's most influential economic, political, diplomatic and military thinkers. In a market nearly saturated with books that do little more than echo each other's amazed exclamations at China's rapid economic development, getAbstract considers this a refreshing change. The book does not offer in-depth analysis of the ideas it presents, nor does it assess their merits and demerits in any detail. It merely introduces a few very prominent Chinese intellectuals and offers a brief summary of their ideas. The book's chief value is that it acknowledges the breadth of the diversity of thought within China, and spotlights the conflicts and tensions that are shaping its development.

Mark Leonard's research provides readers with the voices of Chinese intellectuals not commonly read about in `western' academia. His book, "What Does China Think" paints stripes around the status of Chinese development in the ever-changing era of transnational globalization outlining its multi-faceted approach to making reforms through the implementation of various experiments throughout China. Leonard goes on to highlight the differences in the emerging political ideologies of the `neo-comm' to the `liberal internationalist', and the challenges facing the current hegemonic power of the United States while South-East Asia develops into a global superpower. This book provided me with the insight I was looking for, detailed information about the development of China from the Chinese perspective. Leonard does a great job weaving together the information gathered from a variety of Chinese intellectuals with current globalization theories. A must-read for anyone interested in Chinese current affairs.

I borrowed this book from a friend, and I haven't read all of it yet. I would just like to say though that this book is very unique in all the China literature I've been able to find, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it approaches China from an kind of humanistic point of view. A lot of commentary seems to simply treat the Communist regime as an impenetrable black box, or reduce their motivations to a couple of simplistic dimensions. This book undertakes a systematic study of Chinese political ideology, which is a fairly few thing. Secondly, it only studies political ideologies that seem to have any chance of being relevant in China. A lot of China analysis looks at things like peasant revolts, or dissident voices, as shaping China's future, without offering any evidence that anyone in the central regime even cares what they think. This book works the other way, starting out first by finding which voices the government is actually listening to. These are very simple premises, but I've been having difficulty finding any literature both as interesting and objective as this.