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Becoming China: The Story Behind the State
One of the two most powerful states in the world, China continues to be seen as a mystery even after decades of an open door. How does China work, what does it want, why does it want it, and what does its rise to global power mean for the rest of the world? As the twenty-first century looks set to be the stage for a battle about competing geopolitical ideals, these are urgent questions for everyone with an interest in what the future might bring.
Despite decades of a relatively open door relationship with the rest of the world, China is still a mystery to many outside it. A world of its own, China is both a microcosm and an amplification of questions and events in the wider world. China's story offers us an opportunity to hold a mirror to to our own assumptions, to our values, and to our ideas about the most important question of what it means to be human in the world of the state.
Epic in scope, this is the story of how China became the state it is today and how its worldview is based on what has gone before. Weaving together inspirations, ideas, wars and dreams to reveal the heart of what it means to be Chinese and how the past impacts on the present.
Despite decades of a relatively open door relationship with the rest of the world, China is still a mystery to many outside it. A world of its own, China is both a microcosm and an amplification of questions and events in the wider world. China's story offers us an opportunity to hold a mirror to to our own assumptions, to our values, and to our ideas about the most important question of what it means to be human in the world of the state.
Epic in scope, this is the story of how China became the state it is today and how its worldview is based on what has gone before. Weaving together inspirations, ideas, wars and dreams to reveal the heart of what it means to be Chinese and how the past impacts on the present.
- GenresChinaNonfiction
784 pages, Hardcover
Published November 7, 2017
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101 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 25, 2019
A fascinating BIG BOOK about the entire history of China, and then a relatively deep dive into the current (c 2017) situation. As I continued in it, and particularly the last 200 pages, I was increasingly reminded of Paranoia, the Role Playing Game, a blackly comic scenario where everyone is reporting on everyone else whilst all being corrupt and the ultimate arbiter is a completely irrational monolithic dictator. That is played for laughs, sadly it is all too real here.
The book starts in pre-history, with China foundational myths, and rattles through about 3000 years of Chinese history in about 200 pages. This is the story of warring clans, long dynasties of semi-dystopian peace and the constant destruction and reconstruction of core foundational texts (here Confucius). I was a little surprised by the pace, as it felt like there was more meat there. Particularly when the next 150 pages run through the 20th C, I was halfway through the book and we had made it to 2000. Then Gescher retells the 20th Century through an urban perspective. Then a rural one. And when she gets to the post Deng Xiaoping era she tells variants of that story about five times. Why? For emphasis. To show that the baked in contradictions of modern China comes from the contradictions of the Democratic Socialist Republic (and how it justifies its democracy). How the China views the rest of the world (as an insignificance for much of its history), and its own inherent sense of ethnic purity for the Han. Sadly the current Chinese state, a Marxist market economy dictatorship, seems to increasingly look like the endgame model (with or without the Marxism) for much of the nationalist movements globally, China spotted the flaw in elections a long time ago - you can't control the outcome.
The last section of the book flounders a touch because the speed of internal change and the knife-edge Xi Jinping has been trying to navigate as the economy wobbles while mass communications blossom. But this brings us back to Paranoia, a system where you slowly build up treason points. Well China is now doing this, on a mass scale with everyone in a mixture of a social credit rating score and TripAdvisor. And as said above, everyone reports on everyone, everyone is a little bit corrupt (because you have to so you can survive) and so even the mightiest can fall. Gescher knows the story is ongoing, and is a little worried that the whole thing may come tumbling down after publication. But China is monolithic, as is this excellently readable discursive summary.
The book starts in pre-history, with China foundational myths, and rattles through about 3000 years of Chinese history in about 200 pages. This is the story of warring clans, long dynasties of semi-dystopian peace and the constant destruction and reconstruction of core foundational texts (here Confucius). I was a little surprised by the pace, as it felt like there was more meat there. Particularly when the next 150 pages run through the 20th C, I was halfway through the book and we had made it to 2000. Then Gescher retells the 20th Century through an urban perspective. Then a rural one. And when she gets to the post Deng Xiaoping era she tells variants of that story about five times. Why? For emphasis. To show that the baked in contradictions of modern China comes from the contradictions of the Democratic Socialist Republic (and how it justifies its democracy). How the China views the rest of the world (as an insignificance for much of its history), and its own inherent sense of ethnic purity for the Han. Sadly the current Chinese state, a Marxist market economy dictatorship, seems to increasingly look like the endgame model (with or without the Marxism) for much of the nationalist movements globally, China spotted the flaw in elections a long time ago - you can't control the outcome.
The last section of the book flounders a touch because the speed of internal change and the knife-edge Xi Jinping has been trying to navigate as the economy wobbles while mass communications blossom. But this brings us back to Paranoia, a system where you slowly build up treason points. Well China is now doing this, on a mass scale with everyone in a mixture of a social credit rating score and TripAdvisor. And as said above, everyone reports on everyone, everyone is a little bit corrupt (because you have to so you can survive) and so even the mightiest can fall. Gescher knows the story is ongoing, and is a little worried that the whole thing may come tumbling down after publication. But China is monolithic, as is this excellently readable discursive summary.
July 2, 2020
This is a behemoth of a book; it took me nearly a year to read...and I read a fair amount.
That said, it is the most comprehensive and interestingly written history book on China I've read to date. Gescher writes in a style that contextualises the zeitgeist of any historic era. If she's explaining the end of the Warring States period, for example, she writes as if it is 'obvious' that the Qin brought unity "all under heaven"; she writes that, of course, things happened the way the did because that is what the leaders or subjects at the time would have believed. it puts you into the history and makes for very intuitive and refreshing reading than the usual 'and then this happened, so this happened'.
Becoming China reaches back all the way to the, arguably fictional, Xia Dynasty to contemporary China, as led by Xi Jinping. Its deep, really informative and I cannot wait to read it again in about five years when I can truly appreciate the detail with a better understanding of further learning.
My only complaint is that any pinyin translations have no tones - this is very common in similar works but somewhat strange as to why. For someone who has developed a fairly decent base of Mandarin, there were many new words of interest, but without the tones, or even characters, there is little value in writing them in order to learn better vocabulary. A zhi, shi or wei could be any version of zhí, shì or wěi without knowing how it is said. A minor point for sure, but it would have added to the reading!
Great book; highly recommended for any sinophile.
That said, it is the most comprehensive and interestingly written history book on China I've read to date. Gescher writes in a style that contextualises the zeitgeist of any historic era. If she's explaining the end of the Warring States period, for example, she writes as if it is 'obvious' that the Qin brought unity "all under heaven"; she writes that, of course, things happened the way the did because that is what the leaders or subjects at the time would have believed. it puts you into the history and makes for very intuitive and refreshing reading than the usual 'and then this happened, so this happened'.
Becoming China reaches back all the way to the, arguably fictional, Xia Dynasty to contemporary China, as led by Xi Jinping. Its deep, really informative and I cannot wait to read it again in about five years when I can truly appreciate the detail with a better understanding of further learning.
My only complaint is that any pinyin translations have no tones - this is very common in similar works but somewhat strange as to why. For someone who has developed a fairly decent base of Mandarin, there were many new words of interest, but without the tones, or even characters, there is little value in writing them in order to learn better vocabulary. A zhi, shi or wei could be any version of zhí, shì or wěi without knowing how it is said. A minor point for sure, but it would have added to the reading!
Great book; highly recommended for any sinophile.
July 1, 2018
A well written summary of Chinese history and ambitions. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand modern China. Absorbing and comprehensive. A mighty achievement. Also, frankly, a must read for anyone interested in future trends in politics.
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October 21, 2021There's an article in The Hindu one can find online, providing background info on Gescher.
April 12, 2022
Fascinating book, good potted history of China, and an incite into the workings of the modern state
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews