China Wakes: The Struggle For The Soul Of A Rising Power by Nicholas D. Kristof
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve always enjoyed the writing of Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Their work as a married couple writing for The New York Times as well as their individual publications, including Sheryl WuDunn’s Half the Sky have challenged many of us to think more deeply about human rights, and especially, injustices toward women.
These same sensitivities are evident in this twenty year old work chronicling their years as correspondents for The New York Times in China. The book chronicles their time (1988-1993) during the democracy uprisings that led to Tiananmen Square and the beginnings of the economic boom that has worked a radical transformation upon the most populous nation on earth.
It is a chronicle of the tensions such a transforming nation faces. We see through the eyes of dissidents as well as party members the corrupt and repressive face of Maoist and post-Maoist communism. We see the pervasive importance of quangxi, a form of social (and at times, financial) capital, in making one’s way and getting ahead. Kristof (the authors alternate chapters) gives us an up close and personal account of the tragedy of Tiananmen, and with it an example of the courage journalists show in “getting the story”. As well, we get an account of how the authors walked the fine line between the restrictions placed upon them as foreign journalists, and their efforts to circumvent those restrictions, including travel as tourists to see the realities of peasant villages–not the show villages the government would parade them through.
Perhaps most insightful is their description of the transition from a totalitarian to an authoritarian rule that has occurred concurrent with China’s economic boom. Another is their recognition of the high savings rate of the Chinese people that has provided the capital that has fueled that boom. And already in the early ’90s, they describe the growing problems with air and water pollution that imperil the nation’s health, the global climate, and is becoming in this day an increasing urgent reality that challenges the unfettered growth of the economy.
The book made me curious to learn more about what the last twenty years have been like. It hasn’t witnessed the crumbling of the Communist party or authoritarian rule. It has witnessed huge economic growth and growing international power and influence. It seems that many of the questions about China’s future being asked in the book are still relevant–and unanswered.