CHINA IN THE 21ST CENTURY: What Everyone Needs to Know

Abstract

The first three sections aim to provide an overview of the core principles of Chinese thought and of historical milestones, sufficient to ask interesting questions of the present day. [...] the section on Schools of Thought focuses mainly on Confucianism, as it is thus that Wasserstrom can explain how notions of harmonization and economic development are harnessed by the state through an appeal to Chinese philosophy.

CHINA IN THE 21ST CENTURY: What Everyone Needs to Know. By Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom. Oxford, U.K.; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. xvii, 164 pp. US$16.95. ISBN 978-0-19-539412-2.

This is one of those little, readable books that could only have been written by someone who has spent a career working on the subject matter. Wasserstrom gives us a contemporary account that fluently summarizes and explains the trajectories and significance of recent Chinese history, without bemusing the beginner or irritating the more experienced China scholar. I have already recommended the book to colleagues teaching China-related courses to general arts students. This will give them a grounding in some key ideas, facts and narratives, and will steer them towards a balanced and thoughtful approach to the idea of China.

The book is divided into six sections: Schools of Thought; Imperial China; Revolutions and Revolutionaries; From Mao to Now; US-China Misunderstandings; and The Future. There is also a useful section on further reading, and an index. The first three sections aim to provide an overview of the core principles of Chinese thought and of historical milestones, sufficient to ask interesting questions of the present day. Thus, the section on Schools of Thought focuses mainly on Confucianism, as it is thus that Wasserstrom can explain how notions of harmonization and economic development are harnessed by the state through an appeal to Chinese philosophy. These are not simple ideas to explain, as they unpick the dichotomies that underpin popular concepts of what China "is," what communism "is," and what Confucius "said." Here, the reader is gently coaxed to take a more nuanced perspective and thereby gain a deeper understanding of how politics, philosophy and the economy do business together in China today. The local meaning of minzhu is briefly delineated, to prepare the reader for thinking outside the usual boundaries of democratic and non-democratic regimes, when considering how some Chinese might still interpret the people's will, as rule by the intellectual elites.

The second section, Imperial China, has a lot of ground to cover and does so by a judicious mix of continuities and historical specifics. Wasserstrom is careful to point out that, whilst China has conceptual longevities in the dynastic system, the examination system, and the relationship between Heaven and Earth, it is also a dynamic geo-political entity with shifting borders. Thus, he neatly prepares the new student-or indeed old diehard-to think differently about China's current political boundaries and aspirations. China is not an unmoveable giant, but a political construction. It has changed over the past centuries, and it is likely to change again. This insight is drawn from debates in China Studies over the past few years arguing that China is not an eternal truth, but a living, breathing socio-political sphere. Yes, it is subject to disasters that could be slated as Heaven's comments on earthly mismanagement, but it is also a regular state, which can expand, contract, bloom or wither, according to global and parochial circumstance. It is remarkably successful as a national imaginary, but it is also rife with contradiction. Internal and external colonization have led to particular formations of cosmopolitanism, and of course to a thriving diasporic Chinese world that refers back to the mainland without always being in thrall to either its politics or its versions of how to nominate and value Chinese cultures, ethnicities and languages.

The section on Mao also aims to bring a wider sense of the failures of the Nationalists in order to contextualize the rise of the Chinese Communist Party under Mao's leadership. The political intricacies of the power factions and the movements and debacles of those decades are extremely well told. There is sufficient detail provided, in short sub-sections, to make sense of the narrative, to remember other details in previous sections, and to look forward to the later discussion on the present and future. All the familiar milestones are noted and given enough explanation to provoke curiosity but also, and most importantly, to indicate to the reader that these events were not simple, nor discrete. The succinct description of what we might call the origins of the Cultural Revolution is a case in point. Wasserstrom tells us that the political disaster of the Great Leap Forward led to Mao's temporary loss of supreme leadership. However, he reminds us that Mao was still considered the leading Marxist philosopher of his age. We therefore easily see the political logic of how Mao fought to regain his position through the power of the word, the slogan and the philosophical call to action.

But Wassestrom's real focus in this book is to point out to his fellow Americans that they need to understand China before they critique it. I am writing this review a few days after Hu Jintao's visit to the USA in 2011. This super-powers' encounter provoked familiar concerns with anti-Chinese feeling in the States, and anti-US rhetoric in China. The future of China does not rest in America, but Wasserstrom understands that the future of the political world will have a lot to do with their future relationship. This book is his small but elegant answer to the scholar's responsibility to keep everyone better informed.