Evan OsnosCritiques

This afternoon on the Internet I saw the launch of China’s second super aircraft carrier, a massive, beautiful beast. It put me in mind of the lessons of Great Leap Liu, a character in Evan Osnos’ book who built China’s massive high speed railways in record time before being fingered as one of China’s most corrupt public officials.

I look at the picture of that aircraft carrier and wonder what the size of the graft is that lurks beneath the hull of that mega-monster ship.

Because China today as when Evan Osnos wrote this book some years ago is still mired in the privilege of the elites and huge corruption even as its storied growth slows to mere epic levels.

Osnos’ book tries but in my opinion does not quite convey the entrepreneurial zest of 21st century China, nor the massive political capital the authoritarian regime has created in a mere two generations.

Rather he focuses on it’s soft underbelly and insecurities.

When I think of my own country Canada I see three centuries of scraping the countryside of its treasures and negligible influence on the world stage.

What few people will acknowledge today is that Mao’s slaughter of millions in China due to incompetent gov’t set the stage for a massive comeback using virtually slave labour to rob the West of its wealth under its own nose.

Nixon played the “China card” to push the Soviet Union into irrelevance not realizing that unleashing the Asian tiger would also be America’s undoing.

Osnos seems to think that the Chinese state needs a better rudder than the Communist Leadership can offer now or ever, and he may have a point.

When I think of a state with so many cities of 20 million or more souls, enormous environmental challenges, the aging workforce, the imperative for growth, I can barely comprehend the pressures on this government.

$20. Signed by Author.

Wildland describes the many ways Americans lost faith in their government and society, becoming a tinderbox waiting for the arsonist Donald Trump. It begans with the attack on 9/11/2001 and continues to the insurrection on 1/6/2021, looking at the many changes that happened during those twenty years that made us all so mad at the world.

Osnos can claim both the and outsider perspective. He writes about places he lived and worked, but he spent twelve years working in China so many of the changes that may be imperceptible as they happened were jarring to come home to. He set out to find out how and why we changed so much and why so many of us have given up on the common good.

Drawing on his lived experience in Greenwich, Connecticut; Clarksburg, West Virginia; and Chicago, Illinois as well as interviews with people from there, he is able to go deeply into the emotional landscape while mapping the socioeconomic environmental changes. During this time, inequality increased. A few became incomprehensibly wealthy while nearly everyone else lost ground. The expectation that the next generation will do better than the last has been lost, not for one, but for two generations. People have a right to be angry.

While Wildland is fascinating, well-researched, and well-written, I think Evan Olnos misses the main driver of anger today. He mentions racism and even notes that the birthrate of nonwhite babies outpaces white babies by a bit. But perhaps because racism was there in 2001 and is still here in 2021, he underestimates its effect. Economic conditions do not explain why people without health insurance oppose reforms that would insure them and safeguard their health, but white supremacy is so powerful that people would rather be poor than equal.

It’s not that Olnos ignores racism but he consistently underestimates its power. The word racism appears only seventeen times in a 430-page book and eighteen for racist. And yes, all the other trends contibute to our problems, the loss of local news, the weakening of labor, the gloridication og greed to the point Gordan Gecko becomes the hero. But all of that would not be enough without racism. For Olnos, racism is primarily expressed through anti-immigrant sentiment easily exploited by Trump, but that is less enduring and less virulent than the anti-Black racism expressed through opposition to democracy itself. The claim that Biden lost is rooted in the deeply held belief that Black voters are not as legitimate as white voters. It is why we shrug at 12-hour lines to vote and why the GOP can sustain absolute oppositing to voting rights. White people believe in democracy so long as they make the decisions, the very thought of losing their absolute hegemony sends them into an insurrectionist rage.

Every point Olnos makes is valid, but he miss the point. Racism is the lever through which class oppression is able to move mountains. White people would rather be poor than equal. Class analysis will only take us so far, if we do not grapple with white supremacy first and foremost, there is no permanent progress. For that reason, although again and again, I was moved by and agreed with Olnos chapter by chapter, I was also infuriated by the absence of reckoning honestly with the power of white supremacy.

I received an e-galley of Wildland from the publisher through NetGalley

Wildland at Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Macmillan
Evan Osnos author site
Essay at Harvard Gazette

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2022/01/17/9780374286675/

The author of this interesting book is a writer for New Yorker magazine who lived overseas from 2001 to 2013. When he returned to the US, he found the country to be very different from the one he left, and wanted to know why. He chose three places he was intimately connected with, Greenwich, Connecticut, where he grew up, Clarksburg, West Virginia, where he began his journalism career, and Chicago, Illinois, where his family is from. Over the next several years, he visited these places many times and interviewed and got to know many people there. This book is the result of his reporting.

In Clarksburg, he found members of the white working class and poor. There, he investigated what was gained and what was lost, "when some of America's wealthiest people tapped the natural resources beneath the homes of some of America's poorest people."

In Chicago, he focused primarily on the black urban poor, "to understand the compounded effects of American segregation."

And in Greenwich, he found representatives of America's wealthiest--the top .001%, including many hedge fund managers. He sought "to learn how a gospel of economic liberty had altered beliefs among leaders of America's capitalism, and made anything possible, for the right price."

The book covers a lot of the defining events of the last 20 years or so through these lenses, and it goes a long way towards showing how the current deep divisions in our society developed and how deeply entrenched these divisions now are. He concludes that the time between 2001 and 1-6-2021, "was a period in which Americans lost their vision for the common good, the capacity to see the union as larger than the sum of its parts."

The conclusion he draws is not good: "If America's history is a story of constant rebalancing--between greed and generosity, industry and nature, identity and assimilation--then the country had spun so far out of balance that it had lost its center of gravity."

There is a lot to think about in this book. It reminded me of The Unwinding by George Packer, still a worthwhile read, although several years old.

Recommended.
4 stars

USA, Journalism

There's a lot to process here. It's a big book and it pulls together a huge number of threads into a more-or-less cohesive analysis. It's valuable to learn the history of our current precarious moment, and it's important that the author tells stories of regular people and allows them to express their own opinions and perspectives. I'm not sure how much I actually got out of this. I learned some new details and perhaps gained some insights, but I'm not sure what is actionable, other than that we need to really listen to each other with respect and open hearts and minds. That's not really a unique prescription (and it is, of course, very difficult), but I suppose a reminder is helpful. Still, if you're unfamiliar with the background of economic precarity and inequality, rising nativism and nationalism, and the authoritarian and anti-democratic turn of the Republican party, this book is a great summation of all that recent history, right up to the January 6 2001 insurrection.

Evan Osnos' Wildland is a fascinating and illuminating look at the political fury of Americans in the first decades of the 21st century. This book builds slowly but powerfully as Osnos reviews the different strands of American life - the deepening divide of economic inequality, unequal access to medical care, racial injustice, drugs and gun violence - that have torn at ordinary Americans over the last 20 years and built up into the fury of the Trump years.

Osnos, a reporter for the New Yorker, returned to America in 2013 after spending a number of years on assignment abroad. Once back in Washington DC, he began to explore the lives of everyday Americans in three different cities he had connections to - Greenwich, Connecticut; Chicago, Illinois; and Clarksburg, West Virginia. The stories of these Americans form the basis for this book.

In the book Osnos follows a hedge fund manager, a small town newspaper editor, a community activist, and many others. Out of these stories a theme emerges of justice and fairness not only unfound, but systematically denied. In each story the impacts of American capitalism and politics are not uplifting, but rather cold, unfeeling and disheartening.

Another animating theme of these stories is that disconnection among Americans has become acute. We no longer identify with our local communities or are even aware of issues important to our neighborhood, town or city. As local newspapers have faded away and we've turned to the internet for information, many of us are more knowledgeable and animated by events happening nationally.

This book ties strands together from 9/11 through the housing crash of 2008 right up to today. The overall picture it paints is not pretty. Osnos seems to feel that America after Trump understands that many of the issues Trump highlighted in his first campaign were real and in need of addressing, even if Trump himself had no answers and failed to address them. Osnos points to signs of local activism and political involvement (particularly in the case of grassroots organizing in West Virginia) as hope that Americans will find a way to right our course.

There is not a grand conclusion to this book, and I think that's appropriate. While Osnos did a great job illuminating how we got to the current point, where we go from here is yet to be decided, and so better to let events play out.

For anyone interested in understanding the American political realities of today I recommend Wildland. I rate this book Four Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐.

NOTE: I received this book through Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Only made it about 35% through; I liked the book, but it wasn't something I cared enough about to finish reading.

This is not a bad book, by no means, but apart from some interesting anecdotes I am really not sure what to take away. The author tries to frame china in a western world view and this leaves the impression of a distorted picture of reality. Especially all his criticism of the CPC seems a bit hollow if you have in mind that for all the people he talks to there is never someone interviewed who could give a real inside view into the party. How are they selected? What is their style of work, especially regarding policy-implementation? How do people rise up in the ranks? Well, there is that one guy from the propaganda department who created a play on Confucius and on the one page where he gets to say something he leaves a good impression on me. So in the end I got the impression that for all the experience the author almost surely possesses concerning China we get a (bit) biased pro-westernish view which does not tell the whole story, though I believe he tried to be neutral.

An excellent short overview of Biden's political career and what he may mean to the nation. Although I wished for more depth in many places, I appreciated what this book accomplished. As a refresher, this book was quite good, and I thought it gave a fair assessment of the man, including the accomplishments, the mistakes, and the aspirations.

A cultural anthropology view of China, with a strong Western morality bias. Osnos expands on many threads, with some I really love (opening with the story of the Taiwanese deserter who became an econ professor in China), to the blind self-taught lawyer, to others that were more naggy and more of the same. A nuanced view of China just before Xi's ascent into power. I feel I needed to read this earlier. I feel I receive a more balanced view of China from a friend who has lived the last 7 years as an expat in Beijing and Shanghai than from a western journalist.

Well-written summary of major issues in China during the time the author, former Beijing correspondent for the New Yorker, lived there. Behind-the-scenes perspective on dissenters, entrepreneurs, and other ordinary people.

Really interesting book about aspiration, power, and truth in modern China, where advertising and shopping are relatively new and entertaining practices and where there are four aspiring college students for every place in a college, despite the fact that the number of colleges doubled in ten years. A lot of the book is about censorship: there is an estimated one propaganda officer for every one hundred Chinese citizens. People are aware of the censorship, so (as Zeynep Tufceki has also explored), the most useful workers try to diffuse protest by adding chaff, from jokes to ads, into discussions of fraught public issues. One result of the censorship: the “most successful film ever made about two of China’s national symbols, kung fu and pandas, had to be made by a foreign studio (DreamWorks), because no Chinese filmmaker would ever have been allowed to have fun with such solemn subjects.”

A lot of the book is also, and not unrelatedly, about corruption, which Osnos deems less visible than in other developing countries because it’s not a matter of small bribes sought by customs officers or street cops—but if you want good education or treatment at a public hospital, that’s another matter. And China’s great infrastructure projects have been the source of billions of dollars’ worth of theft. Instead of a hierarchical patronage system, corruption is anarchic—people grabbing what they can get. To deal with this, Beijing sometimes punishes local officials, but it also bans discussions of powerful officials’ wealth and briefly tried to ban companies from using the word “luxury” in names or ads. The result of censorship plus corruption has been pervasive distrust, including distrust of actually public-minded actions.

Chasing fortune, truth, and faith in the new China

Author Osnos' theme is expressed right up front on page 5: "The Party no longer promises equality or an end to toil. It promises only prosperity, pride and strength." The remainder of the book elaborates upon this theme chronicling historically how China's Communist Party evolved to this point in order to stay in power, telling the stories of a variety of individuals who have bought into this scenario (or not), or who have remained constant in their desire for a more democratic society (or not), etc. "This book is an account of the collision of two forces: aspiration and authoritarianism" (p. 7).

"In 1978, the average Chinese income was $200; by 2014, it was $6,000" (p. 4). The success of those early achievers--those who responded quickly to Deng Xiaoping's carrot held out by the Party in return for the peoples' submission--has stirred a desire for success and wealth that Osnos compares to that seen in America's Gilded Age when every man "had his dream". In short, as the book unfolds, one finds oneself reading the story of how the Party offers "its people a bargain: prosperity in exchange for loyalty" (p. 34).

But does the Party hold up its side--does it ensure all forms of prosperity--including mental and physical health? As Osnos recites disaster after disaster and shortfall after shortfall (collapsing schools, tainted food products, incompetencies, graft, fraud, embezzlement) it appears that not all aspects of the three traditional Chinese desires (FuLuShou - Happiness, Wealth/Power, and Longevity) are being addressed.

The individuals that Osnos met, interviewed, and analyzes are amongst the best chapters and I found myself intrigued by many of the insider stories surrounding those names we only know through the media--Ai Weiwei, Hu Shuli, Lin Yifu, Liu Xiaobo, Gao Zhisheng, Han Han, Chen Guangcheng, etc. The mixture itself is fascinating--from heroes to gods with clay feet (and that choice is often left to the reader to decide).

And although a China-watcher for many years, Osnos revealed a number of aspects of today's China that had slipped by me--expressions such as a "chicken talking to a duck" or "maguan" ("to buy a government promotion"), or the story of the grass mud horse & river crab. Such examples brought home the truth of many of his points. And as a historian, I was especially pleased to see the weaving in of some of history's sharper images--for example, how the 14C Emperor and founder of the Ming Dynasty (Zhu Yuanzhang=Emperor Hongwu) "ordered thieving officials to be executed, skinned, and stuffed with straw so that their carcasses might be propped up like mannequins for visitors" (p. 249).

And what reader wouldn't love the story of Osnos' trip to Europe with a Chinese tour group? I found myself laughing out loud at how perfectly Osnos captured the scenes.

Age of Ambition is definitely a book to read if you're at all interested in modern China and want to decipher what we see and hear in today's media--both Chinese and foreign, sympathetic and not-so sympathetic. I added this book to my "armchair travel" list because in many ways it reflects the best of the genre in the footsteps of Paul Theroux. It was when it lost that sharpness that I found myself skimming ahead a few pages here and there, only to be caught back up in the storyline on the next page.

A great book. I read the New Yorker regularly and some of this material was included in some stories, but it doesn't
matter because the tales are worth repeating. China is royally screwed; they have allowed people to get rich, but the entire country is as crooked as can be. There is more corruption in China than you can believe and it starts at the top. That is how they did it, because everybody is on the take, and so they steal and grow their way to success,.

I've always liked narratives in which there's an outsider looking in, and this is certainly one such book. Osnos had access to many people that I've never heard of, but seem to be quite important. And he also writes very well, with a compelling voice.

This is illuminating and alarming book looks at where China finds itself today, after thirty years of what may the the most extraordinary sustained growth that any country has ever experienced. That is a very different place from the past, and a place where the future is very unclear. Osnos presents the way people are reacting to this through a series of vignettes, relying on a set of people he spoke with often. The impression is kaleidoscopic. As Osnos repeatedly makes clear, the super-rapid pace of social change has had many different effects, depending on who you are, what you want, and where in the system you find yourself. The overall impression he leaves is one of uncertainty: he does not pretend to know where China will go next (if indeed there is one "China", and if indeed it goes in one direction). A fascinating read.

Of the books I've been reading on China (and I have no idea why I've been reading books on China), this is the one that pulled me in and opened my eyes. VERY well written

I was in China for 6 months in 2004, teaching English at a rural college, then traveling. I don't think I met any big movers and shakers, but I did very much notice the proliferation of internet cafes and the frustration of dealing with the Great Firewall. I haven't really kept up with the news from China in the years since. This book gave me a chance look in on some of the big cultural changes that have happened over the past decade. The people interviewed here are a fascinating set of characters, and the tensions in Chinese society keep twisting along. I was happy to see that people are demanding more openness, and that there is some movement against corruption, and towards more equitable income distribution (though that could be a long time coming).

A wonderful in depth look at what is going on in contemporary China by a man who has lived there for several years. The subtitle says it all ( Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the new China). China has become very adept at capitalism but has inherited the problems of corruption and out of control materialism. While opening up to capitalism the country still struggles with censorship which continues unabated and religion which is making a big comeback there. If you want to know whats up in China - read this book!

This is a fascinating and informative look at the current political and economic situation in China, as well as the general Zeitgeist of its citizens. The past 40 years have seen impressive changes in the Chinese economy, which have had huge implications for culture and politics.

Not only does the book examine the economic changes, which are pretty easy to describe, but also the cultural changes. As their world is changing, the Chinese are trying to make sense of their new reality. That new reality is full of contradictions, so it is hard to find meaning in it. Thanks to the internet, the Communist Party is having trouble controlling the information people can access, which means that people are aware of the extreme corruption at every level of Chinese society. It is certainly a fascinating period in Chinese history, and it will be interesting to see how things play out.

I knew very little about China before I picked up this book, and it is totally accessible for someone without much knowledge of Chinese history.

Great book, covering the rise of Chinese economy from 1990's to 2013, widespread corruption, and the Communist Party's repressive measures to suppress dissent, including extreme censorship, intimidation, violence, and other repressive tactics. The author briefly discusses the destruction of traditional beliefs, culture, and customs during the Cultural Revolution and the current situation, in which amorality prevails, although a few are turning to Bhuddism, Christianity, and other belief systems.

5240. Age of Ambition Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, by Evan Osnos (read 23 Jan 2015) (National Book Award nonfiction prize in 2014) This book won the 2014 National Book Award prize for nonfiction and is the 32nd such winner I have read. The author lived in China from 2005 to 2013 and interviewed many prominent Chinese figures, including Han Han, Liu Xiaobo (Nobel Peace prize winner), Lin Yufu (World Bank chief economist), and many others. The Government spends much time repressing speech and commentary in publications and on the Internet. Its position is that a good economy is the way to quell dissent and that freedom of speech would result in the Communist Party losing control of the country. The work to put the book together is impressive and it affords as good an insight into Communist China and life there in this century as I have ever read.

Good book about how times are changing in China, well told through various characters. But I am not that interested so stopped midway through.
Beijing changed very much.
Incredible story of Justin Yifu Lin from Taiwan, who defected and swam to China, left family, became economist, got Chicago phd, and became Chief Economist of the World Bank.
Ref to Norwegian sinologist Mette Hansgård Hansen who saw teachers imparting individualism.
Story of girl Gung who went to school. Created dating site.
Funny about Chinese tourists in Europe.
Truth chapter-about the propaganda department. Propaganda important for Mao. We hear about the judgement of Mao having been 77% correct and 30% wrong. Under Deng: Studied western PR and spin policies to improve propaganda. Censorship, no mention of Tiananmen e.g. Freedom of speech and the press guaranteed in the constitution, "but regulations gave government broad powers to imprison editors and writers for "harming national interests" and other offenses (p. 122)". Parallel realities-public and real.
Recommended for those interested in China.
Economist Lin.