What Does China Think? - Softcover

Leonard, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007230680 ISBN 13: 9780007230686

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2008

Synopsis

An invigorating book about the debates raging within China. We all know about the fast pace of change in this country. This book brings us the ideas being fought over in the country itself - from democracy to the idea of a 'peaceful rise'. It challenges all of our assumptions about China.

We know everything and nothing about China. We know that China is changing so fast that the maps in Shanghai need to be rewritten every two weeks. We know that China has brought 300 million people from agricultural backwardness into modernity in just 30 years (something that took 200 years in Europe). China's voracious appetite for resources is gobbling up 40% of the world's cement., 40% of its coal, 30% of its steel, and 12% of its energy. It has become so integrated into the global economy that its prospects have immediate effects on our everyday lives: simultaneously doubling the cost of the London Olympics while halving the cost of our computers; keeping the US economy afloat but sinking the Italian footwear industry. We have an image of China as a dictatorship; a nationalist empire that threatens its neighbours and global peace.

But how many people know about the debates raging within China? What do we really know about the kind of society China wants to become? What ideas are motivating its citizens? We can name America's Neo-Cons and the religious right, but cannot name Chinese writers, thinkers or journalists - what is the future they dream of for their country, or the world it is shaping? Because China's rise - like the fall of Rome or the British Raj - will echo down generations to come, these are the questions we increasingly need to ask. Mark Leonard asks us to forget everything we thought we knew about China and start again. He introduces us to the thinkers that are shaping China's wide open future and opens up a hidden world of intellectual debate that is driving a new Chinese revolution and changing the face of the world.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Leonard founded the leading independent think tank The Foreign Policy Centre at the age of 24, under the patronage of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He also wrote the famous pamphlet, Rebranding Britain, coining the phrase `Cool Britannia'. He is now Director of Foreign Policy at the Centre for European Reform. He has written regular commentary for all the leading newspapers and magazines, has presented the BBC' Analysis programme, and appeared as a commentator on CNN.

From Publishers Weekly

Commonly characterized as a juggernaut monomaniacally focused on breakneck economic growth, China is actually riven by a lively, far-reaching debate over its future, argues this inquisitive study. Leonard (Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century) divides Chinese intellectuals into a New Right that wants to extend laissez-faire market reforms and an increasingly influential New Left that decries rising inequality, corruption and environmental destruction and wants a strong government to rein in capitalist elites and protect workers. Meanwhile, political reformers push cautiously for local and Communist Party elections against a consensus that associates democracy with chaotic mob rule or national dismemberment. China's foreign policy is split between liberal internationalists and truculent neo-comms who contend that China must be ready to use force against its enemies. The author notes that these ideological divisions resemble those in Western countries, but emphasizes the distinctiveness of Chinese ideas, like the concept of the deliberative dictatorship of a one-party state that stays responsive to popular pressures, or a Walled World where globalization enhances rather than erodes the autonomy of national governments. Leonard's is a lucid, eye-opening account of China's intellectual scene and its growing importance to the world. (May)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0007230680
• ISBN 13: 9780007230686
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176