The Chinese - Softcover

Becker, Jasper

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195149408 ISBN 13: 9780195149401

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2002

Synopsis

In The Chinese, Jasper Becker, China's premier western correspondent, strips the country of its myths and captures the Chinese as they really live. For nearly two decades Becker has lived in China, and reported from areas where most visitors do not reach. Here he is at his most candid, reporting from all over the country: from tiny, crowded homes in the swollen cities of the southeast rim to a vast, secret network of thousands of defense bunkers in the northwest. He exposes Chinese society in all of its layers: from remote, illiterate peasants; to the rising classes of businessmen; to local despots; the twenty grades of Party apparatchicks; to the dominant, comparatively small caste of Party leaders who are often ignorant of the people they rule.

Becker lets the Chinese speak for themselves, in voices that are rich and moving. He teaches a great deal about the magnitude--and the false face--of China's vaunted economic boom, and further shows the pervasive institutionalized crime that has risen out of economic poverty. In all, Becker reveals a China very different than our long-held assumptions depict. The Chinese is the hidden story of people of the world's largest nation--a nation so poorly understood and so vital to the future.

About this title

About the Author

Jasper Becker was the resident correspondent in China for the Manchester Guardian from 1985 to 1990. He has since reported on Chinese affairs for BBC World Service, as well as for the Economist, and is now Beijing Bureau Chief for the South China Morning Post. His book Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine was the winner of the Dutch PIOOM award for human rights.

From Publishers Weekly

In this ambitious work, Becker, a veteran chronicler of China (Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine), explores the impact that a quarter-century of economic reform has had upon the Chinese people. In a wise attempt to avoid generalizationsDall too easy to use when writing of a population of 1.25 billion peopleDBecker reports on how the various sectors of Chinese society have fared. He is after contrast, not continuity, conundrums rather than convenient answers, and he succeeds admirably. While entrepreneurs in China's coastal cities grow wealthy, he explains, millions of peasants in the hinterland remain mired in the deepest poverty. While privileged Communist Party members parlay their positions into lucrative business deals, countless numbers of laid-off state industrial workers fear for the future. Farming communities battle, usually unsuccessfully, against corrupt local officials who are taxing them into ruin; intellectuals battle with themselves over whether to ally with the regime or defy it. And over it all preside the elite few at the very top of the Party, aloof, out of touch, and determined to remain in power by any means necessary. Becker's stories, and the wealth of data and historical references he also provides, support his contention that, while the market may have made China richer, it has not necessarily made it a fairer or more just society; there may be more losers than winners in China's race toward wealth. (Dec. 8)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0195149408
• ISBN 13: 9780195149401
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 496