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What Does China Think?

3.75 of 5 stars 3.75 · rating details · 144 ratings · 35 reviews

We know everything and nothing about China. We know that China is changing so fast that the maps in Shanghai need to be redrawn every two weeks. We know that China has brought 300 million people from agricultural backwardness into modernity in just thirty years, and that its impact on the global economy is growing at unprecedented speed. We have an image of China as a dict...more

Hardcover, 176 pages

Published April 29th 2008 by PublicAffairs (first published October 2nd 2007)

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Jan 26, 2009 Ganesh rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The success story of China and political changes taken in china in recent days. The new moderation in Communism. Simply it says: even within hard core communism, democracy and capitalism can have honourable space. And China has proved it.

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Mar 27, 2013 Tony rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"From the late Qing era to the early years of the Republic, the era of warlords, Jiang Jieshi, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin —Chinese politics has made world-shaking changes, but the label put on it [in the West] made no change at all."

And so Mark Leonard sets out, in about 150 very readable pages, to change that, by giving a brief overview of the variety of recent strands of political theory and practice, painting modern China not so much as one big behemoth, but as a wide range of...more

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Jan 24, 2013 Adrian rated it 4 of 5 stars

While the literary landscape is awash with political analysis on China, this short and highly readable volume addresses the fundamental aspects of China's political thought, in an approach that is neither judgmental, nor excessively optimistic toward China's progress.
Chinese approach toward democracy is essentially a cautionary one, with the political culture viewing it as a potential source of instability. This takes the form of possible unrest in non-Han areas, such as Xinjiang, Tibet, or the...more While the literary landscape is awash with political analysis on China, this short and highly readable volume addresses the fundamental aspects of China's political thought, in an approach that is neither judgmental, nor excessively optimistic toward China's progress.
Chinese approach toward democracy is essentially a cautionary one, with the political culture viewing it as a potential source of instability. This takes the form of possible unrest in non-Han areas, such as Xinjiang, Tibet, or the Korean regions of the North East, but also as an inhibitor toward economic growth.
The Chinese approach is to substitute the varying competing approaches found in multiparty politics for a one party system wherein various approaches compete under one party. This is compared to choosing a variety of chefs, and thereafter having no say in what they cook (the analogy of the Western model) or having one Chef, but choosing what he cooks you (the Chinese approach).
The book makes note of how participatory elections have begun at village and local levels, and have taken a much broader and dynamic form within the Chongqing Municipality, but approach to the national level will have to come incrementally.
A more thought provoking discussion is the approach to Chinese accumulation of military power. As strategists may be aware, China does not yet possess the key ingredients of superpower strength, namely a blue water navy, missile launching submarines, or aircraft carriers. However, it seeks to compete with American military might on asymmetric grounds, in the form of cyber-warfare, and other covert methods.
The most alarming chapter concerns China's foreign policy, which could be best defined as a pure political realism approach. China's only concern is sovereignty, and it pledges non-interference in the external affairs of others. However, as this book argues, China has sought to aid existing power structures, teaching neighboring Central Asian governments in approaches to suppressing domestic unrest, and has sold surveillance equipment to foreign leaders such as Robert Mugabe. This is not out of any ideological impulses, rather economic interests.
In all, this does not necessarily hold true to the principle of non-interference. Unlike revolutionary powers, such as the USSR, which challenged the status quo of other states, and to a lesser extent, the United States, China is arguably a staunchly non revolutionary power, a status quo vanguard.
The book contains insights into the divergence of thought between the proponents of continued runaway economic growth (the new right) and those who are more concerned about widening inequality and lack of opportunity (the new left).
In all, a very precise, informative, and to the point book recommendable to China novices, or established Sinologists. (less)

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Dec 03, 2011 AC rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: china

This is a fairly decent, very brief -- but ultimately far too superficial -- treatment of the political debates current (or current 3 years ago) in contemporary China. I suspect that the GFC already has, and that the immanent coming of Xi-Li will additionally... change the equations somewhat.

The introduction and conclusion are worthless.

Chapter one places Hu and Wen clearly and helpfully in the context of the contemporary debate (2008) between the "New Right" (basically, chinese neoliberals fro...more This is a fairly decent, very brief -- but ultimately far too superficial -- treatment of the political debates current (or current 3 years ago) in contemporary China. I suspect that the GFC already has, and that the immanent coming of Xi-Li will additionally... change the equations somewhat.

The introduction and conclusion are worthless.

Chapter one places Hu and Wen clearly and helpfully in the context of the contemporary debate (2008) between the "New Right" (basically, chinese neoliberals from Shanghai and the other coastal cities -- who trace their political descent from Deng and especially from Ziang Jemin); and the "New Left" who are more moderate reformers, more concerned with problems of inequality and the environment (as Leonard tells it), and who count both Hu and Wen and the others who descend from the CCYL (Chinese Communist Youth League) and the inland provinces. Xi comes from this group, though Li is actually thought to have been Hu's special protegé. Xi, btw, is the one who has apparently come out on top, not Li.

Chapter 2 is the best. It discusses the debates about democracy in China -- and shows how China has essentially opted for the Singapore model (Lee Kuan Yew) -- which is rule by experts or by expert committee, what in the West (and in the current EZ we see this mode taking shape as we speak -- with Monti in Italy and Papademos in Athens) is called "technocratic government" (Leonard makes this point). Leonard also refers to this mode of governance as 'consensual' or 'deliberative democracy' or 'deliberative or consensual dictatorship' interchangeably. It establishes governance according to a strict rule of law (enforced by an independent judiciary), responsive to the needs of the public (that is, strong citizen participation) achieved either through petition or public hearings or by what is called deliberative polling (a concept pioneered by James Fishkin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_S.... + http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delibera...) -- rather than through free and truly open elections. It is the wave of the future and, I believe, the way in which "managed" or "guided" democracy will take shape in the West in the coming decades. (Of course, in the West they will try to maintain the fiction of free elections -- but they will be, and already are, essentially a charade). This, according to Leonard, is a workable model, and is something far different from the autocracies of 20th cen. Europe.

Deliberative polling is a fascinating idea. Rather than simply polling the public, which (in China, as in the U.S.) is massively ignorant, about their "opinions", that is, the opinions of the uninformed -- they take 250 or 300 people, chosen at random or on some representative basis -- and then spend the day (or longer) actually educating them about the issues (presented by experts) BEFORE polling them....

Finally, to repeat - and I want to stress this point - Leonard shows -- though the inference is mine -- that there are, indeed, very close resemblances between Deng's "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" (which, of course, was originally a form of Bukharinist 'Right Deviationism', think NEP, but which evolved into an essentially state-driven neoliberalism (think Jiang) and, as I have already said, the "technocracy" taking shape today in Europe.

The third chapter deals with foreign policy, China's conception of 'soft power' - and briefly with the emerging nationalists in the PLA - what Leonard calls the "neocomms" (who are the mirror of the US "Neocons" - but the treatment is a bit superficial. It is important, however, since many on the Right in the U.S. - try to increase the visibility of the "neocomms" in order to justify their own paranoid and militant obsessions with the "rise of China". The "neocomms" (whose house organ is Global Times) are a threat, but they are not in control in China, and media outlets like Global Times are probably being used by the regime as a steam valve.

This book is definitely worth a quick read and is, in some ways, better than the 3-stars I've given it, but is not quite worth 4 stars. So let's call it 3 & a-half or 3/4's. Perhaps I should say that if you know nothing about these matters, it is a 4-star book; but if you read a lot about these issues, it is a 3-star book.

(less)

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Nov 13, 2011 Guy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: politics

Now this is an interesting book! It's always a good sign when I get to the end and immediately start anew, this time with a pen in hand to mark and comment on critical ideas and passages. Leonard has spent a lot of time over the past few years talking to Chinese intellectuals and listening to what they say about China and the world -- past, present, and, above all, future. He asks them some questions, gives some critical analysis (tempered perhaps by his desire not to burn bridges, but gently ha...more Now this is an interesting book! It's always a good sign when I get to the end and immediately start anew, this time with a pen in hand to mark and comment on critical ideas and passages. Leonard has spent a lot of time over the past few years talking to Chinese intellectuals and listening to what they say about China and the world -- past, present, and, above all, future. He asks them some questions, gives some critical analysis (tempered perhaps by his desire not to burn bridges, but gently hard-hitting nevertheless), but for the most part he just lets them talk about what they think is important and why. And the result is (for this reader) a fascinating set of insights into the intellectual debates that have formed and continue to form Chinese policies both internal and external.

One thing to bear in mind as you read the book is that there are no dissidents here: the intellectuals quoted are all inside the system -- those who have chosen to work within the constraints imposed by the (Chinese Communist) Party, of which the most important by far is "Thou shalt not question the right of the Party to rule China". But that is entirely appropriate for a book whose title is "What does China think?", and not "What do the Chinese think?". For better or for worse, the Party is going to continue to rule China for as long as it can... and that, as the book makes clear, may be long indeed.

I know a little about China, having spent three weeks there this past September and having read various books and many articles over the years, so a fair amount of the content was confirmatory, but there were nevertheless a surprising number of "Aha!" moments and genuinely transformational insights. For example, everyone knows that China has allowed large parts of its economy to run themselves according to capitalist principles, but the extent to which the Party itself has drunk the Koolaid of totally uncontrolled laissez-faire capitalism was a surprise to me. I had always assumed that the admission of capitalism was grudging... but the true state of affairs is that the "reformers" in China today are those who are trying to reestablish social liberal principles (think Eurosocialism) rather than those who are arguing for less government intervention in the economy.

Along the same lines, consider the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and subsequent crackdown. I had always thought that this was about democracy, but it seems as if that was a fairly minor element. The larger issue was popular discontent with the negative effects of market fundamentalism -- workers demonstrating for social security and wage/price stability and against corruption, speculation, and the downsides of bare-knuckles capitalism. The crackdown was therefore actually the crushing of a nascent socialist movement by a Party that wanted to continue headlong economic growth through uncontrolled free markets... and had surprisingly little to do with repressing the calls of democracy activists for an end to the Party's monopoly on power. At least in the eyes of the intellectuals interviewed for this book (always a necessary caveat).

Fascinatingly, none of the intellectuals interviewed are arguing for a return to communist economic principles -- the Left side of the debate seems to extend about as far as Singapore (while the Right side is very close to Ron Paul's Libertarianism in the US).

Some other interesting insights that I'll mention but won't go into detail about are:

o the continuing inferiority complex vis à vis the West that despite all claims of Great Power status remains one of the driving forces in how China views the world.
o the degree to which China's imperial history still determines how they think about things ("imperial" here in the Chinese sense of an all-powerful emperor -- today the Party -- at the center of a great state surrounded by barbarians who must be kept out, rather than the western "imperial" sense of a colonial empire).
o the way in which the Party seems to be able to take any and all external ideas and reinterpret them in such a way as to support it's continuing monopoly of power, even if those ideas would on the surface suggest the opposite, with the result that you have to read and listen very carefully when Chinese intellectuals use terms you are familiar with -- they probably mean something very different by them than what you would expect.

I could go on like this for a while, but your time would be better spent ordering and reading this book.

The only major flaw that I see is, interestingly, quite similar to the major flaw in Leonard's previous book, "Why Europe will run the 21st Century": when he steps outside his area of focus to consider wider implications (in this case, what China means for the rest of the world), the quality of his insights drops dramatically. One of his theses is that China may offer a revolutionary new way that other developing countries may choose to follow that is in competition with American free-market consumer democracy with human-rights cream on top, European post-nation-state shared-values-based regional integration, and Islamist theocracy. Without doubt the Chinese model will be attractive, but not because it is revolutionary, and not for the primary reasons he cites.

Frankly the Chinese model is just the old nation-state approach (states should be free to do what they like within their borders) which the Party likes because it invalidates criticism of continued Party autocracy. And that's exactly why many developing states will like it: you can have economic growth and keep your autocracy. In other words, not because the Chinese way shows that you don't have to give up sovereignty (to NGOs like the IMF) or replace your own culture with American consumerism, which is what Leonard proposes. Those are attractive things, of course, and will be oft cited, but they aren't the fundamental reason why so many autocrats will follow China's lead.

But those are nits. This is an excellent book, as with his first book clear and concise -- a pleasure to read and unreservedly recommended!(less)

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Nov 12, 2010 Nathan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: other-non-fiction

I'm used to superficial business books about China, and to be honest I thought that's what this was. But no, it proved to be more substantial and interesting than that. This is a book about China's internal politics: how different groups of Chinese see China's rise and how it has been managed.

Just as you can't make sense of America until you understand Democrats and Republicans, this book gives you the context to make sense of Chinese domestic and foreign policy. Rarely did I find it boring, whi...more

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Aug 24, 2010 Jon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

Mark Leonard's premise is that the west has not yet recognized that China is developing her own unique approach to achieving super power status. China has tried to keep a low profile throughout the exponential economic growth of the past 30 years, for fear of western opposition and or intervention. Leonard has investigated China's rhetoric and policies in pursuit of multilateralism, soft power, and inter - dependence in relation to the southeast asian community and the world. The ever present ob...more

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Jul 22, 2009 Dewey Norton rated it 4 of 5 stars

To answer this question, the author met with leading scholars, policy makers, journalist, entrepreneurs and others to review economic, domectic and internation political issues. Within the context of one party, centrally planned economy, there is a surprising amount of intellectual ferment and, within strict limits, freedom to analyze ideas and propose alternative for the development of China, a lot more than I had thought. The book addresses some ambitious questions: what kind of country are th...more

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Feb 27, 2009 getAbstract rated it 5 of 5 stars

Short, savvy tour of Chinese issues and arguments

Mark Leonard’s desultory ramble through China’s intellectual landscape introduces that country’s most influential economic, political, diplomatic and military thinkers. In a market nearly saturated with books that do little more than echo each other’s amazed exclamations at China’s rapid economic development, getAbstract considers this a refreshing change. The book does not offer in-depth analysis of the ideas it presents, nor does it assess thei...more

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Jan 25, 2009 Sampath rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Is this how a political scientist writes a memo for policy makers?
This one felt like reading a formal report but has tons of information in it. Worth reading.

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Oct 06, 2011 Muhammed Al-Bishri rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

لاحظت من قصص المؤلف أن المثقفين هناك أكثر واقعية وتدرجاً في مطالبهم الإصلاحية .. والمؤثرة! رغم أن بينهم من يعاني من الملاحقة والنفي لا سيما دعاة الديموقراطية والتي تريدها الحكومة بطريقتها أن تكون تدريجية ولكن يقول المؤلف أن علماء الاقتصاد يعود اليهم الفضل في صعود بلدهم.حين أصبح بفكرهم أكثر تحرراً وإنفتاحاً

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Dec 11, 2012 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

the truth is really not about how China thinks..but to ask the question mainly how does America wants to play out the rest of the world in the coming future..fiat petro dollar, fiscal cliff, military imperialism by using and instigating China surroundings to prevent them from "rising"? such as suggesting Philippines or Japan to be permanent UN Security Council..constant military exercises..point is to provoke China..what does China think? nothing..they are not going to take the bait again since...more

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Jan 13, 2009 Pat rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fascinating book because the author lets many of China's current thinkers talk themselves about the way they think China should be moving - and a liberal democracy does not appear to be the direction. This is a small book, but I really haven't seen anything else that explains both the thinking of the last 20-30 years which resulted in a pretty rapacious capitalism and some of the newer thinking which is looking at repairing some of the damage within an authoritarian framework.

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Aug 10, 2010 Santo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: china-studies

excellent book...

a great insight into some of the prevailing debates over china's position and role in international relations from the chinese' perspectives (or at least, a western interpretation of chinese perspective)...

enjoyed the book wholly, and has made certain switches in brain turned on... a solid reference for analyses on chinese foreign policy, which can provide a look into china's world view, thus allowing us to find a way to deal with such a view...

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Jan 26, 2010 Ann rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If even half of what Leonard says is accurate (and based on what I saw in Copenhagen, it is), the "game" is already over. What China has thought on, has come to pass and they have already taken over the world, the quantitative bit is irrelevant.

His conclusion chapter though is very odd in that it seems like he hasn't read his own book. It's too superficial and I wonder if it's written to the line the publisher thought Western audiences would want to read.

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Dec 31, 2012 Justin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Interesting English language book on Sino-American relations and the growth of China in general, reportedly from the Chinese perspective. The book does an excellent job of portraying the different thought streams within the Chinese gestalt, which is generally presumed to be unified and monolithic.

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May 14, 2012 Audra rated it 3 of 5 stars

While this book has many interesting points about the growth of China and it's policies, it says little about philosophy; which is what it claims to expound upon. In essence, it's exactly similar to any other book written to inform about China in 2008, pre-Olympics. Nothing special but a good read nonetheless.

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Apr 19, 2013 Rui rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: china

Most available books about China are written and have opinions by foreigners. In this book, Chinese academics say what they think about the present and future (mainly politics and economy) of China.

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May 12, 2012 Katie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Even if you're not interested in China, this book can help you recognize and question some of the precepts behind American democracy and foreign policy.

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Jun 19, 2009 Phyllis rated it 4 of 5 stars

I borrowed this from the library and didn't get a chance to finish. I was 3/4 done. It was so good, and I intend to finish it after Lang Lang.

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Jun 24, 2009 Brent rated it 3 of 5 stars

Decent quick read does give some good insight into the current Chinese mindset. Easy and doesn't waste your time.

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Sep 12, 2010 Ritz added it

Relatively easy read. Slightly too sensational, though. Not enough depth to actually force a debate.

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Mar 01, 2010 Trine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Stef

Shelves: mark-leonard, asia, china, history, non-fiction

Thought-provoking, erudite discourse on the past and future role and development of China.

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Oct 13, 2012 Duncan rated it 3 of 5 stars

highly political, not easy for me to read, but working on it.

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Sep 06, 2012 Liam Arnull rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of the most interesting books I have read. I've never looked into Chinese thought but it has fascinated me all the way through the book! Worth a read and I would recommend it.

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Dec 12, 2011 John rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: all-about-china

Compact, easy-to-read overview of the current, surprisingly diverse, trends in Chinese thought, both political and economic. Very much introductory and written from a western perspective, but then that is most likely his target audience.

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Jun 22, 2011 Jeramy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Really interesting comparison of economic philosophies.

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Jul 30, 2012 راضي الشمري rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

بوابة رائعة لعالم الصين الفكري

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Dec 23, 2011 !Tæmbuŝu marked it as to-read

Shelves: political-science, social-cultural, china, ebook-available

KOBOBOOKS

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Jul 18, 2011 Abdulaziz Fagih rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: social-science-books, other

كتاب رائع جدا ويستحق الأقتناء وسأكتب تقيم مفصل عندما أتفرغ لذلك

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