Review: Jeffrey Wasserstrom, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know

I know that when writing reviews it’s important to focus on the book and less so on the author.  I’m breaking this rule.  Jefferey Wasserstrom has to be on of the most tireless writers/scholars on China today.  Seriously, I have no idea when he sleeps.  He teaches history at UC Irvine, supervises a very dynamic group of graduate students, is the author of numerous articles, a blogger for Huffington Post, the driving force behind The China Beat, and in the last three years has published three books: the wry and observant China’s Brave New World – And Other Tales for Global Times (2007), the ambitious scholarly work Global Shanghai, 1850-2010 (2009),  and now a new book with a perhaps even more ambitious premise, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (2010). Just this past week, he’s finished up a month long series of talks at M on the Bund in Shanghai.

The man is a force of nature.

Moreover, Professor Wasserstrom is a model for bridging the divide between good academic scholarship and the needs of a general readership, a divide that seems all the more wide when it comes to writing about China.  The term “public

July 28th, 2010

The Party and History or “Glenn Beck and Xi Jinping: Twins of Different Mothers”

With the 90th anniversary of the CCP just around the corner (okay, next July…), the Party brass and their academic ass sucks got together for a high-level history hootenanny.  At the kick-off, China’s Heir-Apparent-But-We-Still-Can’t-Admit-That-Publicly-Yet Xi Jinping  called for more education regarding the Party’s history.

Xi said the Party, having experienced the tests of revolution, development and reform, “successfully united and led the Chinese people to achieve miracles under an extremely complicated circumstance.”

“Over the past 89 years, the CPC contributed greatly to the nation’s independence, unification and the people’s well-being,” he said.

Well, I for one am relieved…because THAT’S a story that hasn’t been told enough times through China’s education, media, or entertainment industry.

I suspect though that Xi’s main message had less to do with trumpeting a triumphalist narrative of Party history than about his accompanying admonition against those who sought to “distort or smear the Party’s history.”

For the CCP-impaired or if you are otherwise unaccustomed to Zhongnanhai-speak, allow me to translate:

“People are starting to see through all of our bullshit, so we need to pump some ex-lax into the cattle feed and get the shovels ready.”

It’s not clear if Xi was responding to an actual threat within

July 23rd, 2010

Being friends with China…

While I am not a lawyer and have very little interest in business, I nevertheless love reading Dan Harris’ China Law Blog.  Dan is a tireless blogger who always manages to make the most mundane issues of legal prudence and China business babble interesting to the non-business person.  Maybe I just like to fantasize about the road not taken, if only I had decided to study law and not, say, 19th century China.  Would spending my days reading legal briefs be more interesting than deciphering inter-office memos from the 1870s? Thinking a bit more (and knowing my temperament) probably not…but I bet I’d be closer to owning a nice boat.

Over the weekend, Dan blogged about this article (from China Market Access Blog) and how being a “good friend” to China is important for your business.  The original post, by Jason Patent, is based on a talk by Dr. James Chan.  The advice (via Chan via Patent and via Dan Harris) is this:

There is one thing many Westerners don’t think about when they walk into China. What the Chinese people really want from Westerners is “acceptance.” If you want to sell anything to the Chinese or, for that matter, build

July 19th, 2010

A day at the links…

Crazy Thursday…class at 1:30 (where I previewed my latest CD “The Entire Chinese Revolution in 90 Easy Minutes”) and then a day of dealing with one of those student issues that make you regret becoming an administrator as opposed to just a humble (but much poorer) history teacher. On top of that I’m crashing a deadline for a book review. Nevertheless, China marches on and there’s no shortage of hijinks and crazy links even on a Thursday such as this.

Lest anyone forget, today is the designated day to remember the founding of the Communist Party back on July 23, 1921.  Why do we celebrate it on July 1? Yeah, I don’t know either.  I also managed to write nearly 2000 words yesterday about the Opium War and forgot to mention that July 1 is the anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to the PRC.  Whoops.

The Wall Street Journal China Real Time Report links to a post by a “senior official at the China Academy of Social Sciences” who has a new plan to solve China’s problem of income inequality: “steal from the rich and give to the poor.”  Seems to me that was the original plan…

July 1st, 2010

Excellent new podcast series on China hosted by Kaiser Kuo

Sinica is the new podcast by longtime Beijing resident, media guru, metal shredding guitarist and all around raconteur Kaiser Kuo.  It’s a free form round table gab fest on China issues from people who, you know, actually live and work here.  First installment is digital media expert and Internet entrepreneur Bill Bishop and Danwei founder/Beijing media stalwart Jeremy Goldkorn talking about…what else?…Google.  I’m already looking forward to the next installment featuring the Imagethief himself, Will Moss.  Check it out.

April 2nd, 2010
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