Recommended Reading – China Special Edition

February 16th, 2010 by zen

Great review by Dan of TDAXP. I too read the Tayor book and second Dan’s recommendation.

Foreign Policy.com (John Lee) – Big Trouble With Big China

Trademark FP quickie taxonomic treatment of Sino-American relations.

Foreign Affairs (Yang Yao) – The End of the Beijing Consensus

An optimistic view of China on the path to middle-class political liberalization.

The Glittering Eye – Sinophobia and China’s time bombs

Two well-considered posts from 2009 and 2005 respectively by Dave Schuler who has been a China-watcher for decades.

SWJ Blog – China’s grand strategy – past, present and future

From 2009 – and with this post, Recommended Reading comes full circle.

That’s it!

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Posted in china, recommended reading | 8 comments

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  1. T. Greer:

    February 16th, 2010 at 5:33 am

    Don’t know if you saw it Zen, but Joseph Fouche linked to an excellent piece addressed to the Chinese (and written by by Andy Xie) outlining the ways in which the Chinese should manipulate U.S. economic policies on the short term.  It was an insightful read that couples nicely with some of the peices you have linked to here.

  2. historyguy99:

    February 16th, 2010 at 6:09 am

    Mark,

    You’ve put together an excellent collection of readings on China.

    I am humbled to be in such company.

  3. Seerov:

    February 16th, 2010 at 7:54 am

    "Despite the fact that our share of global GDP has held amazingly steady since 1975 (26.3 percent then, compared to 26.7 percent last year), many Americans continue to assume China’s rise comes at our expense." (Barrnet)
    .
    I’m not exactly sure what he’s getting at here?  America’s percentage of global GDP could be 99 percent, but that doesn’t guarantee a higher standard of living.  A better figure to look at would be real wages since 1975.  We should compare real wages with increases in the cost of living, especially in housing and healthcare. 

  4. tdaxp:

    February 16th, 2010 at 2:09 pm

    Thanks for the link!After reading Taylor’s biography of Chiang, I see much clearer what the Chinese call the difference between "First Generation" and "Second Generation" leaders. Even though the age difference was not always that great (and Zhou was actually a contemporary of Mao), Deng Xiaoping, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and Chiang Chingkuo (in Taiwan) studied abroad. Mao and Chiang Chai-shek didn’t.  You had a generation change at the top, from a traditional Chinese perspective on defensive posturing to rational means-end analysis.I’m reading Taylor biography of Chingkuo now. Also very good. Very similar to Deng and that crew (even was a class-mate of Deng), though his rare ability to be born high and go even higher recalls the Kangxi Emperor.

  5. zen:

    February 16th, 2010 at 2:10 pm

    Hi Seerov,
    .
    Real wages stagnation, which I agree is a problem, has as much to do with internal political economy decisions as external competition. It isn’t just that we outsourced manufacturing, workers ( or even shareholders) have not shared in any of their productivity gains which have been increasingly skimmed off by hedge fund managers, Wall Street investors and CEO types.
    .
    Thx T. Greer – missed that one.
    .
    Anytime HG!

  6. zen:

    February 16th, 2010 at 5:59 pm

    Hi Dan,

    .
    Agree generally with your take on generations *but* Chiang did spend time in Japan – not sure if he was studying – but he networked and garnered support from the ultranationalist and anti-Communist circles around Toyama Mitsuru, founder of the Black Dragon Society. Ironically, because the secretive groups that Toyama sponsored as the godfather of the extreme Right -Yakuza nexus were in the lead in demanding Imperial Japanese expansionism in China decades later.

  7. Joseph Fouche:

    February 16th, 2010 at 8:23 pm

    Chiang under went military training in Japan for two years and served in the Japanese army for a further two years. He also spent three months studying in Moscow.

  8. tdaxp:

    February 17th, 2010 at 9:09 pm

    Indeed. Wang Jingwei (who would head the Pro-Japan Collaborationist Government) and him were classmates, I believe, at a Japanese military prep school.  By comparison, Deng, Chiang Chungkuo, and others went to Sun Yatsen University in Moscow, and before that Zhou, Deng, and others were in a study-abroad program in France.I do not know how Japan managed to lift itself up, but the gravitational pull of Chinese culture seems to have been too strong for any would-be leader who was educated in the Orient. This goes for Wang and Chiang, as well as Mao (who went to a teacher’s college in Hunan, but also worked as an assistant librarian at Peking University).@Joseph, Chiang K.’s time in Moscow was not as a student. Rather, he was actively involved in reestablishing the KMT along Leninist lines (that is, creating a Party-State with political commisars, etc.).