What Walt's reading -- books about China

Walt spent three years in China in the middle of this decade and maintains a lively interest in that country and its people. China is a land where nothing is what it seems. Nothing should be taken at face value. So it's a hard country and culture for westerners to understand. Books and articles which succeed in getting behind the masks and screens to present a glimpse of the real China are therefore to be prized.

One such is Out of Mao's Shadow: the Struggle for the Soul of a New China, by Philip P. Pan (Simon & Schuster, 2008. 349 pp. $28) Mr. Pan is a foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, and their former Beijing bureau chief. Although American born, he speaks fluent Chinese and spent seven years eluding the Communist authorities and talking to people whose voices would otherwise go unheard.

His book is a collection of 11 stories of "ordinary" Chinese people, narrating their struggles to come to terms with their nation's past -- the trumoil and trauma of Mao's rule -- and promote real political change.

The Young people who filled Tiananmen Square just over 20 years ago saw their hopes -- and some, their bodies -- crushed in a massacre. In spite of that, Pan reveals, many continue to push for justice. They are the survivors whose families endured one of the world's deadliest famines during the Great Leap Forward, whose idealism was exploited during the madness of the Cultural Revolution, and whose values are now tested by the booming Chinese economy and the rush to get rich.

Out of Mao's Shadow offers a startling new perspective on China, challenging our assumption (so often expressed by our "experts" on foreign affairs) that free markets automatically lead to free societies. In the case of China, it's simply not so. The Communists are in control of China, as firmly as ever. Read this book and see for yourself how and why China has become the world's most successful authoritarian state.

Recently read and recommendable: Poorly made in China : an insider's account of the tactics behind China's production game, by Paul Midler (Wiley, 2009). If you're importing products from China, or even if you just buy Chinese goods (impossible to do otherwise), you should read this cautionary tale about "Chinese quality control".