Understanding China A Guide to China Economy History and Political Culture John Bryan Starr Books
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Understanding China A Guide to China Economy History and Political Culture John Bryan Starr Books
This book is one of the best books for China Study. This book has complied detailed data and provides systematic analysis.It is valuable for policy study and academic research.
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Understanding China A Guide to China Economy History and Political Culture John Bryan Starr Books Reviews
A reviewer from Bangalore hit the nail on the head when they said this book was meant to be an introduction into understanding China. This book is very easy to read and does an excellent job providing the reader a very general overview on China. If one is more interested in China's economy, something written by Nicholas Lardy or other economists with works on China would be appropriate; Minxin Pei is well known for his work on rural unrest in China, and so on and so forth. Bottom line, there are well known individuals for their work on China that can provide more details for certain areas. Mr. Starr leaves the reader to go out and deepen their knowledge.
This book is a very neat compilation of facts and figures about China. It is also important to note what this book is not, which is a comprehensive dossier on China as it is today. The book's scope is introductory & to that end, it succeeds to a great extent.
The readership gets a lot of factual data about all that defines a country - its history, geography, politics, biggest issues, the military, environmental concerns & foreign policy. Although, I never suspected the author to back an established propaganda - the book is essentially erudite - I still do not discount a possibility that certain analysis & conclusions might, at times, seem coloured. I maintain, however, that if such is the case, it is probably more of a mistake than deliberate misleading.
Also, this densely information packed nature of the book can sometimes seem a positive handicap. Certain times, there is more information than is required to form an idea of the topic under discourse; & it is possible that a reader - who is not really concerned with research type material on China - might be actually burdened with this information overload. Chapter summaries or key points would have been great, given the depth of detailed data in this book.
I also maintain that China, or any country, is a trifle to complex to be "understood" by reading a book, but if it is an introduction that you're looking for, this book is a very good read.
S!
John Bryan Starr presents an overview of China, including its geography, history, political system, economy, and social-cultural system. His excellent, in-depth analysis discusses various Chinese institutions and issues, including the military, the educational system, urban and rural problems, population growth, environment degradation, human rights, culture, and intellectual freedom. However, you should view this book as a background introduction, since most of its information dates from research completed by 1995. For the latest developments in China, refer to more current sources. The book, which is written directly and clearly without academic jargon, is directed primarily toward westerners, particularly in the United States. We recommend this book to executives in companies that are expanding into China or negotiating with Chinese business leaders, or to anyone who wants a background of solid information about China.
John Bryan Starr's UNDERSTANDING CHINA is a solid survey of modern and contemporary China. The book takes as its underlying premise that the West must try to understand China in order to deal "with it effectively in the years ahead" (p. 323). To that end, Starr, who from historical, geographical, economic, cultural and sociological perspectives treats the full spectrum of China's recent circumstances in chapters dealing with the political system, the armed forces, cities and rural life, human rights, culture, etc., makes frequent comparison with and contrasts to Western norms.
The author sets out to answer the questions, "What are the principal problems confronting China today? What is the capacity of the Chinese political system to address these problems successfully? And, given the problems and the government's capacity, what is the outcome likely to be?" (p. 318). Using the topical approach outlined above, Starr attempts to answer these questions accordingly. He avoids a lot of speculation, but does suggest that China faces enormous problems in the years ahead, and posits that the Party-state will likely fail, either due to urban worker unrest or on account of the weakening of the center and the strengthening of the periphery (i.e., growth in regional strength). In either case the PLA would likely intervene, Starr believes, and the Army would probably be marginally better off dealing with urban unrest in restoring some sort of central government.
Starr's prose is workmanlike; to say of a book like this that surely serves as a college textbook that its style is not too dull is to give it high praise. There are few missteps; as an example of one, when Starr begins his chapter on China's imperial past ("Patterns from the Past," Chapter 2), he overanalyzes a simple Chinese time expression meaning "before" to extrapolate from it the Chinese view of "Time" (p. 40). It's not the characterization of China's conception of time as backward-looking that is off the mark, but simply Starr's extrapolating it from the simple time expression.
Any book on China that tries to deal with contemporary issues will invariably be dated by the time it appears in print. Starr's book, which first appeared in 1997, and then was revised and updated in 2001, is no exception; at the time the book was published, for instance, the Three Gorges Dam hadn't yet been completed. Hu Jintao doesn't even appear in the Index. Nonetheless, the book, now several years old, holds up quite well. It continues to serve as an excellent introduction to China, both for the serious student as well as for the reader with a casual interest in China's emerging role in the world.
This book should be better renamed as Why China Is Going To Collapse Soon. Besides factual errors (eg saying that all ethnic minorities have their own languages, and that the silk road begun after the tenth century)and the author's occasional show-off or his wrong Chinese phrases(see for eg the beginning of chapter two), this book is about the problems that China has been facing, and the author since the 1997edition believes that the Chinese don't have the ability to cope with the problems. Not that China deserves praises, but 20 years passed since the prediction was made, and yet China is still there doing ok, although having as many problems as for example the United States.
This book is one of the best books for China Study. This book has complied detailed data and provides systematic analysis.
It is valuable for policy study and academic research.
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