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China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know

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In this fully revised and updated third edition of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know®, Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Maura Elizabeth Cunningham provide cogent answers to urgent questions regarding the world's newest superpower and offer a framework for understanding China's meteoric rise from developing country to superpower. Framing their answers through the historical legacies - Confucian thought, Western and Japanese imperialism, the Mao era, and the Tiananmen Square massacre - that largely define China's present-day trajectory, Wasserstrom and Cunningham introduce readers to the Chinese Communist Party, the building boom in Shanghai, and the environmental fallout of rapid Chinese industrialization. They also explain unique aspects of Chinese culture, such as the one-child policy, and provide insight into Chinese-American relations, a subject that has become increasingly fraught during the Trump era. As Wasserstrom and Cunningham draw parallels between China and other industrialized nations during their periods of development, in particular the United States during its rapid industrialization in the 19th century, they also predict how we might expect China to act in the future vis-à-vis the United States, Russia, India, and its East Asian neighbors.

Updated to include perspectives on Hong Kong's shifting political status, as well as an expanded discussion of President Xi Jinping's time in office, China in the 21st Century provides a concise and insightful introduction to this significant global power.

228 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 18, 2010

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About the author

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

43 books40 followers
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, a Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, is a modern Chinese social and cultural historian, with a strong interest in connecting China's past to its present and placing both into comparative and global perspective. He has taught and written about subjects ranging from gender to revolution, human rights to urban change.

His work has received funding from the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation.

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
Profile Image for Brian Griffith.
Author 7 books334 followers
February 14, 2021
Full of clear explanations of fast-changing Chinese realities, and thoughtful comparisons with American experience. Wasserstrom is a friendly, capable guide, dealing with tons of the questions Westerners normally raise. Along the way he compares the career of Mao Zedong with that of Andrew Jackson. He compares American views on ethnic unrest in Xinjiang with those of Indian journalists. Along with his compact explanations, Wasserstrom directs the reader to a host of good websites and books. He calls for a corresponding book on what everyone in China should know about the USA.
Profile Image for Gabberbella (Cynthia).
32 reviews
May 15, 2011
I had to read this book for a reflection paper for a course on Pacific Asian History, and I was pleasantly surprised how informative and easy to understand this book was! The author goes into great detail but in few words -if that makes sense. Starts out with a historical overview, which helped me in other aspects of my college course, and was EASY to understand. Then goes into more current history and issues that China faces today. Very open minded, no 'bashing' of any nation, just plain facts and understanding of issues.
Profile Image for Paul Samael.
Author 6 books9 followers
January 13, 2014
This book is an excellent primer on modern China - but when I say "primer", I don't mean to imply that that it is simply a "noddy" guide. On the contrary, the author has a real talent for making some quite subtle and sophisticated points in a very striking but concise manner. To take just one example: when talking about China's approach to governance, he notes that there is a tendency in the West to seize on the authoritarian aspects, leading people to think of China in terms of George Orwell's "1984", with its depiction of "the boot in the face"-style totalitarianism. But whilst the author acknowledges that there are certainly elements of that in the post-Mao era (not least the Tiananmen Square massacre), he suggests that overall, Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" may offer a better analogy, with its focus on catering to the needs of the masses with a view to ensuring that they aren't inclined to bother their heads about things like democracy. Consider, for instance, how China's government has quite deliberately focussed on the kind of economic reform that the old Soviet Union never managed and which probably led to its collapse (because its particular brand of "boot in the face" style totalitarianism was accompanied by an economic system which could only turn out millions of left-footed boots).

There are some slightly sniffy comments in some of the other reviews here about how this book is not particularly detailed and uses an FAQ style to break up the content into more manageable chunks. And if you are the kind of person that is impressed by length, this clearly isn't going to be the book for you - go read Martin Jacques' thumping great muddle-headed tome about China instead. If, on the other hand, you want to read a book that will make you look at China differently and which frequently acknowledges that there are two or more possible views about any one issue, then I can't recommend this book highly enough. For me, its brevity was an asset, not a liability.
Profile Image for Mina.
1,138 reviews125 followers
February 15, 2021
This is a simplistic overview of recent history through a socioeconomic and politic perspective.

If you want a more varied range of subjects, try ''China A to Z: Everything You Need to Know to Understand Chinese Customs and Culture''.

This book is structured in the question/answer pattern, meaning many a short introduction for many a short answer. A few longer descriptive pieces would have covered the same information more succinctly. That would have resulted in a great reduction of blank spaces, introductory expressions and book size, consequently, especially in the first half. The information is nonetheless easier to access as all the questions are in the Table of Contents.

I'd also rather it stop referencing the Olympic Games every other example, ditch the shoddy prose and stop answering the question with its positive or negative statement form.

As is often the case with respectable nonfiction, this book is also quite long and often politically correct. It turns a minimum of information into

equivocal,
overly-simplistic
verbal shrubbery


and the occasional lukewarm joke.

Go away now.
636 reviews176 followers
June 5, 2018
This is designed to serve as an introduction to China for the largely ignorant but unbigoted Western (especially American) reader. The modal reader for this book appears to be something like a subscriber to the Economist who has never visited China. But for copyright issues, this book would probably have fit well in the series as "China for Dummies."

It is organized as a series of questions that a curious foreigner might ask about China -- Who was Confucius? Why is Confucius back in favor? What was the Rape of Nanking? Was Mao a Monster? Why is China's Diversity Overlooked? and so on-- each answered in a page or two. The writing is extremely accessible and the answers are all clear and fair-minded (which is to say that they will annoy ideologues and specialists, each in their particular ways), charting a middle path between Sino-philia and Sino-phobia, as well as between Sino-optimism and and Sino-pessimism.

One thing the book does very effectively is to subtly but consistently reinforce that "China" is not synonymous with "the Chinese Communist Party," and indeed that 'China' itself is extremely diverse and complicated; a recurring refrain in the book, correct as far as it goes, is that Westerners should avoid "simplistic" understandings of China. Its accomplishment is to present these complexities in unadorned and accessible prose. In the end, it performatively demonstrates that China must be seen historically to be understood, while underscoring that any country as big and old as China is impossible to pin down in any straightforward way.
Profile Image for Angel .
1,536 reviews46 followers
September 3, 2010
This was a very good introduction to the country of China. If you all you know about China is that they are Communists and big, then you really need to read this book. The author delivers on a big challenge: presenting a primer on Chinese history and culture that is accessible and concise. I think he achieves that pretty well. You get the key points of Chinese culture and history, and you will certainly feel like you learned something by the end of the book. The strength of the book lies in the fact that the author clearly strives to be objective. The best part, for me at least, is when he goes over the similarities between the United States and China. He is basically showing readers that while the nations are different, they also have many things in common. This book is definitely a must-read if you want to learn more on this topic. And given China's ascendancy in the world, what we may hear in the news (truth or speculation), this book goes a long way to put things in context.

Oxford so far is doing a good job in this series. The one on Cuba I read (which is reviewed here on GR too) is also excellent. These are books that as a librarian I would not hesitate to recommend to readers wanting to learn more on a topic.
4,071 reviews84 followers
April 9, 2022
China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (Oxford University Press 2010)(951.06)(3634).

This is a question-and-answer format book about China that reads like a CIA factbook. China’s history, dynasties, culture, religion, and future are well-parsed.

Having been published in 2010, much of the information presented in the section about China's future is now out of date.

My rating: 7/10, finished 4/9/22 (3634).

Profile Image for Chaitanya Bapat.
42 reviews3 followers
December 21, 2020
Good book to learn more about China.

This book told me the other side of the West vs China story. In many aspects, China in the past 50 years has replicated the success, growth, and development of colonial English and post-industrial America. While there’s some truth in Western media highlighting gross human rights violations, clamping down of the free speech, utter disregard of international law, and tremendous flexing of the military muscle, there’s a lot of bias that goes into the making of a Western article on China. So I’ll be taking any article (may it come from China or the West) with a grain of salt, being cognizant of the biases. All the dark things aside, China’s heritage is rich, profound and something worth knowing (if not imitating). Coming from a democratic country, the ideals of communism, socialism are a bit remote and abstract. But just as humans of all types of ethnicity, caste, religion co-exist, so do the ideologies (capitalist vs socialist, democratic vs authoritarian, etc)

For my personal notes:
https://medium.com/read-with-chai/chi...
Profile Image for Andrew Nierenhausen.
62 reviews10 followers
May 15, 2019
This was a super informative book. China has always been a cultural mystery to me, but Wasserstrom illuminates a number of issues impacting Chinese culture that I would not have considered. The drive from rural to urban has been achieved at an accelerated pace over the last 20 years which has led to an older generation familiar with rice farms, bicycle transit, and Mao, while the younger generations are familiar with the internet, mega-cities, ride sharing, and the central planning/capitalist hybrid economy under Jinping. The title of this book is somewhat misleading however, as nearly the first half of the book deal with a broad-strokes summary of Chinese history, from its ancient roots to the development of Nationalist and Communist parties in the 20th century. This book gives a good explanation of the current cultural moment in China, and helps to explain how China interacts with the Western world.
Profile Image for Billy.
233 reviews
August 12, 2011
A brief but useful book that will provide some insight into the hopes and fears of the current regime in China and the Chinese people. The first half focuses on the historical context; this is only partly successful in that it really doesn't inform the reader about the true historical sweep of the Chinese story. The book is better at clearing up misunderstandings that Americans have about what's happening in China now.
24 reviews
February 15, 2017
Concise survey that hits some of the highlights of Chinese history and culture from the Qin dynasty to Xi Jinping. well organized, great refresher.
Profile Image for Joséphine.
212 reviews16 followers
February 26, 2023
A small primer on China viewed from the US, giving short answers (~1p.) to about a hundred essential questions on China. Rather well done but suffers from a few problems. The writing is relatively unengaging, a lot more academic than you would expect given the Q/A format, where a conversational tone might be a better fit. Many repetitions as the answers from different questions sometimes overlap. A lack of continuity since the goal is not to paint a broad picture, but to answer specific questions and correct some misapprehensions that Americans could have. The discussion around perceptions and misperceptions is probably more interesting for older readers who have heard about China for decades, but even then I’m not sure it would add a lot…? It doesn't really go in depth into anything, and barely touches on culture, except for Confucius and why he's back in favor.
Profile Image for jm.
458 reviews20 followers
June 21, 2022
Possibly suitable for people who have never heard of China before (how many of these would get their hands on this book?), but way too superficial for anybody who has had a bit of exposure to it already. And that question and answer format is just annoying - simple headings would have done and would have allowed the text to go deeper.
Profile Image for Graham Mulligan.
49 reviews1 follower
November 22, 2012
China in the 21st Century, What Everyone Needs to Know
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Oxford Univ. Press, 2010

Reviewed by Graham Mulligan


Part 1 Historical Legacies

1. Schools of Thought
2. Imperial China
3. Revolutions and Revolutionaries

Part 2 The Present and the Future

4. From Mao to Now
5. U.S.-China Misunderstandings
6. The Future

This is a short book, 135 pages, with brief sections titled ‘Who was Confucious?’, ‘Why did the Qing dynasty fall?’ and ‘Is China likely to become a democracy?’ and so on. It’s a stretch to think that big questions and big topics can be covered in 150 word entries, but for the busy traveler something like an Executive Summary will give him/her a quick entry into knowing something about China. You won’t gain any deep insights into China with this book, and you may get more out of the travelers essay at the back of the Lonely Planet because it at least has maps and pictures that help you find stuff. But it is handy and would make a good read on the plane going over to China.

Professor Wasserstrom teaches at U of Cal, Irvine and is the co-founder of ‘China Beat: How the East is Read’, a blog that is full of much more in-depth writing from a variety of predominantly American journalists. The blog tracks trends in what is going on in China and how China is being written about.

Further Reading at the back of the book points to a wide selection of books that will take you a long time to get through.
17 reviews2 followers
May 7, 2012
U.S. and China similar in four ways:

1. Common industrial trajectories: China industrial development today strongly resembles the U.S. of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
2. Human rights: While Americans deride the PRC on its frequent violation of human rights, the U.S. remains one of the few countries which officially sanctions capital punishment. China too, for that matter. This, unlike the rest of the great powers.
3. Fiercely protecting oil stocks: The extent to which both the U.S. and China protect global oil stocks is astonishingly similar.
4. Treatment of minorities: Like it or not, both the U.S. and China have been the same in their treatment of Native peoples, Tibetans and/or Uighurs, and native Hawaiians.
Is China likely to become a democracy?" (p123).

Militating strongly against this eventuality is how diligently the PRC has been learning from the experiences of both Taiwan and South Korea (growing middle class and how as examples of authoritarian states that were democratized under pressure from professional and entrepreneurs) as the CCP worked tirelessly to learn how to avoid precisely these scenarios. Just don’t see the PRC demise likely.


Also -Who was Confucius
-What was the Dynastic Cycle,
-what was the Opium War,
-How and why did the Qing Dynasty Fail
Profile Image for Randal.
296 reviews1 follower
March 14, 2020
Not as informative as I'd hoped and despite the title, the book spends very little time discussing modern China. While I understand wanting to take a longer view of the history and cultural ideas that continue to influence China, the significant amount of pages devoted to ancient dynasties and ancient figures detracted from the book.

And when the author finally does get around to discussing 21st century China, he seems to draw some kind of moral equivalency between the US and China that simply does not exist. No matter what historical parallels you might draw between the industrialization experiences of late 19th century America and late 20th China, you cannot ignore the profound differences between a society founded upon limited government and the respect of human rights and a society trapped under totalitarian communist control. At best, Wasserstrom downplays the evil of the CCP; at worst, he misrepresents it. I agree with how he ends the book, essentially saying that the Chinese people and the American people have much in common and should be more receptive to each other. However, any relationship will always be flawed so long as the CCP holds power.
Profile Image for Aurel Lazar.
45 reviews5 followers
May 17, 2019
Despite the fact that I know next to nothing about the more intricate details of recent Chinese history, this book did a decent job of giving me a better appreciation for the complexity of last century or so of Chinese politics, economics, and sociology. I can't say I completely followed 100% of what was being discussed, as I felt that the book assumed a foreknowledge I did not possess - so this might not be the best book for someone like me who has no idea who half of the people being discussed are.

That said, in addition to historical elements, the book focuses heavily on present-day issues and upcoming projects/plans; the book also spends a decent amount of time focusing on Western misconceptions of Chinese society/autonomy/daily life, and a great amount of time on technological issues such as the "Great Firewall" and the development of the Greater Bay Area (Hong Kong/Macau/Shenzhen).
Profile Image for The  Conch.
278 reviews26 followers
October 22, 2019
Chinese President Xi Jinping met Indian PM Narendra Modi in Chennai on Oct 11-12 for second informal summit. I was looking forward a brief introduction about China from ancient time till date. This book serves the purpose. It covers almost entire history of China, its civilization, politics, culture and people. The book can give a reader a picture about China's past, present intention and reality.

Author covers:
# Basic of Chinese philosophy 'Confucianism' and its relation with China's economic development.
# Sequence of major dynasties of China for e.g Qing and Han
# Major revolutions like Opium War, Taiping uprising, Boxer rebellion, May 4th movement, Mao's great leap forward, hundred flowers campaign, cultural revolution and finally protest of Tiananmen square
# How US and China view each other
# Where is China going?

Finally, author Jeffrey Wasserstrom presents an analysis of China which can help anyone to make her/himself aware about one of ancient civilization.
Profile Image for Vanessa.
11 reviews
January 1, 2015
Admittedly, I felt like I knew very little about China prior to reading this book, and because of an upcoming business trip I am in cramming mode. I quickly became overwhelmed by histories, travel guides, and scores of books about some aspect of the 5000 years of China. This book presented itself as a wonderful framework which provided me a general understanding of relevant topics surrounding contemporary China, and now I can go deeper into my specific areas of interest. It's a quick, enjoyable read and I recommend it to anyone who would like the 'Cliff Notes' version of how to begin learning about the complexities of history, culture and peoples of China.
40 reviews
February 11, 2018
I think if you want a brief history of China this is a great book. I read this book for my Chinese literature class and I really enjoyed it. It is very different from any normal textbook and I would highly suggest this book for those who want to gain a new perspective on the global government and foreign relations. I also would recommend this book to those who wish to see a new perspective of history. This book does a pretty good job at showing you how the Chinese people feel about certain events. As with all history, when it's told from only one perspective or viewpoint you can never understand it fully.
Profile Image for Nick.
243 reviews1 follower
March 18, 2019
Wasserstrom offers a very concise overview of the key issues related to China from the US perspective. This book is well balanced and offers enough insight to be worthwhile for a general reader who follows current events in China. Considering that even policy makers and public commentators often express uninformed views of politics in China, there is certainly a wide audience for this book. However, this book offers little for those who do keep up with current events and would be looking for deeper insight.
Profile Image for Andrew Steimer.
23 reviews
September 17, 2019
Good introduction/Biased/Read with caution
If you have never read anything about China after high school, I would recommend this book as a good introduction. The authors/editor have done an excellent job organizing this book so it is quite easy to learn about the Boxer Rebellion, The Long March, etc.

However, the history presented by the authors adheres a little too closely to the CCP party line for my comfort.
Profile Image for Michael-Ann Cerniglia.
235 reviews5 followers
December 4, 2019
2.5 stars. A very basic primer that is written as Q &A. Information was factual and I learned some new things, though other parts felt condescending. It also waters down a lot of very nuanced topics, admittedly for the sake of clarity and succinctness. I would prefer a text that dives into one or two of these issues in more detail.
13 reviews41 followers
February 14, 2018
I am in love with this book, this book is the key guide to china`S history!
But u need to a little of a knowledge background to understand the book.
Profile Image for Josh U.
43 reviews
August 26, 2018
I was intrigued because Chinese history wasn't something I had much exposure to. Pretty condensed. Admittedly I cherrypicked the parts I found most interesting, but an informative read overall.
636 reviews176 followers
December 7, 2018
An excellent primer for the key terms one needs to understand China today.
Profile Image for Mike.
8 reviews
April 19, 2019
Excellent overview.

Great book to learn a little bit about a variety of topics about China, from ancient history to current events.
Profile Image for Nicole Marble.
1,043 reviews11 followers
July 24, 2019
Interesting analysis of behavior and how we could get along better.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews

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