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.

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. ( )

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. ( )