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THE NEW CHINA PLAYBOOK

Name: THE NEW CHINA PLAYBOOK
Author: Keyu Jin
ISBN: 9781984878281

BEYOND SOCIALISM AND CAPITALISM

by Keyu Jin ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 16, 2023

Mixing research with personal experience, Jin offers critical insights about the future of China and its global impact.

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A respected academic provides a nuanced examination of China’s past, present, and future.

China has always been difficult for many Westerners to understand, but the issue has become increasingly crucial as the country’s global role has grown. Jin, who grew up in China and retains strong connections there, was educated in the U.S. and is now a professor at the London School of Economics. With this background, she is well qualified to play the role of cultural interpreter. She has a special interest in the problems now emerging in China as the society struggles to move from an unremitting focus on economic growth to quality-of-life and equity issues. Jin notes that China’s transition from an impoverished, rural country to a wealthy, urbanized society has been remarkably fast. The private sector has driven the growth, especially in the past two decades, but the government remains firmly in control, with a complex system of incentives, rules, easy credit, and government-owned enterprises. The author traces key policies since the time of Deng, and she delves into the impact of the “one-child policy,” an area often overlooked by armchair commentators. For the most part, the Chinese people are willing to accept government direction, including a high degree of personal surveillance and intervention in their lives. They value security over freedom and generally believe that China requires a powerful central authority. Significantly, the younger generation is in many ways more conservative than their parents despite their taste for Western brands and lifestyles. Jin acknowledges China’s incredible progress but wonders what the future holds. “China’s central leadership, which spurred the most successful economic growth story of our time, could also make choices that might have the opposite effect in the future,” she concludes. “The power of the state provides the system’s greatest potential and also poses its gravest inherent risk.”

Mixing research with personal experience, Jin offers critical insights about the future of China and its global impact.

Pub Date: May 16, 2023

ISBN: 9781984878281

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: March 2, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023

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A MILLION TRUTHS

A DECADE IN CHINA

by Linda Jakobson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 14, 1998

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A marvelous introduction to the contradictions and conflicts, the promise and problems that are China today. Jakobson, a correspondent for Finland’s leading newsweekly, has spent well over a decade in China. She arrived before the Tiananmen massacre put an end to China’s nascent democracy movement and was still there when China’s patriarch and architect of the country’s economic miracle, Deng Xiaoping, finally died. A decade of upheaval, of economic and social change no one, especially not the Chinese themselves, can make sense of. To her credit, Jakobson doesn—t try. Rather, she presents a series of personal stories—of friends and acquaintances, strangers and officials—that illuminate the past decade without drawing final conclusions. She has a journalist’s eye for details that mean much and the scholar’s discipline to put these details into historical context: all is confusion. Over the past decade, China has developed economically at a remarkable pace, yet tensions abound. The more prosperous south chafes at the central controls of the party and government. Millionaires are not uncommon in the cities, yet in the countryside a population the size of France’s fights against starvation. Millions of young women work in sweatshop conditions yet make far more money than they would ever earn as peasants. Prosperity grows, but so do uncertainty, class divisions and resentment, crime. Artists rail against their lack of cultural freedom yet turn a deaf ear when the subject turns to Tibet and its fight to retain its identity. Everyone, it seems, wants to make money, but few can find true meaning in their personal lives and in the life of the nation. Such themes are not new, but Jakobson’s gift for storytelling opens them up to the reader in unique and forceful ways. Not for experts perhaps, but for those who wish to simply learn about China, there is no better book around today. (b&w photos)

Pub Date: Oct. 14, 1998

ISBN: 0-87131-873-3

Page Count: 336

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998

Categories:

GENERAL BUSINESS | BUSINESS | ECONOMICS

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CORPORATION NATION

HOW CORPORATIONS ARE TAKING OVER OUR LIVES AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT

by Charles Derber ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 11, 1998

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America’s in deep trouble—corporate oligopoly is seizing our money and stealing our humanity, too. Derber (Sociology/Boston Coll.; Money, Murder and the American Dream, 1992) diagnoses the problem and prescribes a cure. Writing 100 years ago at the height of the Gilded Age, John P. Davis concluded his seminal study, Corporations, by noting that citizenship “has been largely metamorphosed into membership in corporations and patriotism into fidelity to them.” Now the situation is no better, claims Derber. He says we—ve entered another Gilded Age at the turn of a century just as problematic as the last one. His tract compiles complaints against big business and how it blights our lives. Acquiescent politicians, autocratic CEOs, and huge mergers enable corporations to act as a new branch of government, and we confront businesses bigger than nations. The top 200 transnational companies enjoy more income than four fifths of the world’s population; their combined income is greater than the combined economies of 182 countries. Corporate plunder thrives; countervailing forces are weak. It’s time to rethink what a corporation is supposed to do beyond rewarding shareholders. It’s time to fix things. Derber’s answer: populism. But not the hayseed, xenophobic populism of William Jennings Bryan, nor the prejudiced populism of Father Coughlin, nor the reactionary populism of Pat Buchanan. Instead, the professor’s sermon considers and reconsiders what he calls “positive populism.” This new version of an old idea is global, embracing labor, grassroots community groups, multiculturalism, and the environmentalist agenda in a broad movement where corporations must serve people, not the reverse. How practical is this? Derber, unsurprisingly, affirms signs of hope; to be fair, his program makes more sense than Bryan’s platform ever did. An epilogue offers a few halting first steps. His vibrant polemics cite plausible villains and an implausible solution. It remains to be seen if anyone will follow.