China in the Year 2001

by Han Suyin

From a bookseller's description: Han defines, analyzes, and explains the process of change in modern China.

From a vitriolic review by John King Fairbank characterizing the book in short at the end of the long review by quoting the last sentence:
"China is undergoing a revulsive crisis (I) because this Civilization-State (II) in order to overcome its internal crisis and its humiliation (III) wants to invent (IV) and thus recover its cohesion (V) and its inspiration (VI) through its educators (VII) who mobilize it against cultural oppression (VIII)." Mao being the "educator", Fairbank added.

256 pages, Paperback

First published May 28, 1970

About the author

Han Suyin (Pinyin: Hán Sùyīn) is the pen name of Elizabeth Comber, born Rosalie Elisabeth Kuanghu Chow (Pinyin: Zhōu Guānghú). She was a Chinese-born Eurasian author of several books on modern China, novels set in East Asia, and autobiographical works, as well as a physician. She wrote in English and French. She died in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2012.

Reviews

[Rhi Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not, as the name would suggest, some speculation about what china would be like 40+ decades from when it was written, but rather a susinct snapshot of China in 1967 and the immediate history leading to its present conditions at that time. Han Suyin paints a deep, sympathetic, and hopeful picture of a massive nation that had pulled itself through the stifiling and crushing Century of Humiliation, followed by a decade and a half of painful reconstruction, and about to step out on an unprecidented journey in the Cultural Revolution.

The book moves from topic to topic, covering the history, economics, ideology, and military situation of China in the mid-60's. Han Suyin, having lived a long life both in China and abroad, has a strong hold of both international and Chinese sentiments, and uses them in her writing. One thing I never truly took to heart before reading this is exactly how much of Chinese policy was based on the assumption that a nuclear war with the US was going to break out any day (something the US media did nothing to disabuse them of). On top of that, I didn't appreciate exactly how serious the Sino-Soviet split was, considering how much China depended on the USSR at the time.

One thing this book does well is put the Chinese Communist experience in context with historical Chinese movements, philosophy, etc. She shows the rising up of the CPC as a successful end to a long line of peasant uprisings. As well, she paints Mao as a thinker in the same lineage of past great Chinese philosophers, rather than some sort of Soviet plant. As with all things, when you understand the history of a place and it's people, it's modern movements make a lot more sense.

Han Suyin is writing for a western audience and as such this book can be a little simple and pulpy. There is some downplaying of the reprocussions of the Great Leap Forward (either from lack of information or from her own interpretation, I don't know). Despite that, I don't read this as propaganda or apologism but rather someone who genuinely loves her country showing it finally rise out of a period of oppression. A great read for anyone interested in the period

[Ronan Doyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A deeply troubling book in its uncritical support of Mao's ambitions, particularly at a time when they had already yielded suffering on grand and gruesome scales. Insufficiently versed in history to say with certainty whether Suyin will have known then as much as we do now about the Great Leap Forward's dire implications; her choice language gives the sense she is at least partly aware that there is more than an "unfortunate crop failure" at hand. That blinkered perspective is fatal to seeing this as anything more than steadfastly partisan, though the book remains instructive in its fundamental accuracies on the trajectory China was on and the role contemporary American foreign policy played in bringing it to bear.

[Jimmy Head · Rating 1 out of 5]

Irrelevant. Did not see Communist Party as Capitalist Gangsters.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has been on my bookshelves, unread, for years. This edition was published in 1973. Picked it up in the midst of all the discussion about China during the Beijiing Olympics, curious to see what the country looked like a quarter a century ago and where it is now.
It was written in the middle of the Cultural Revolution and the author gives an ultra-sympathetic account of an idealistic country that had adopted a new model for development and progress based on the needs of the people. Mao is presented as a philosopher whose life had bound him to the struggles of the ordinary peasant and was dedicated to re-ordering the world to provide them with the justice they'd been denied for 2,500 years.
Well, whatever you make of that the whole dream was dependent on Chinese communism provding a model for industrialisation and increased productivity. We know now that that just didn't happen and Mao wrecked the economy with his mad schemes for Great Leaps Forward, etc. The Party's revolt against his 'mass line' led to the overthrow of the Gang of Four and the instigation of Deng's 'Four Modernisations' and the capitalist road, in the 1980s.
So China reached 2001 not with the Maoist model, but a capitalist/communist hybrid which uses markets to drive rapid growth, and an authoritarian party apparatus to promote a degree of welfare at least for the mass of the people.
Interesting experience to read this book, and I felt I understood a bit more about recent Chinese history as it was lived by a participant. On to the next book to fill in a few more of the gaps.