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Dragon Rising: An Inside Look at China Today
Jasper Becker's book, The Chinese, was hailed as the best single-volume introduction to this enormous, inscrutable society. The Washington Post said, "He has been everywhere and asked every question," describing his conclusions as "right in both details and analysis." Since then, China's role in world affairs has only grown greater.
No nation on Earth is as newsworthy as 21st-century China—and no book could be timelier than Dragon Rising, appearing just as world attention begins to focus on the 2008 Beijing Olympics and China's all-out effort to present itself as a modern world power. As interest grows, Becker is the ideal guide to the profound changes that are already reshaping economic, diplomatic, and military strategies all over the globe.
Intertwining in-depth analysis with revealing anecdotal evidence, Becker addresses every major question. What form will China's government take? How will communism's legacy affect modernization? Can Shanghai's success with urban capitalism be replicated elsewhere? Will wholesale cultural and economic change be resisted by the millions facing sudden transition from an authoritarian state to a market-driven society? How will the new China cope with pollution, unemployment, and voracious demand for energy? Each chapter examines a specific region and such key local issues as poverty, minority unrest, and official corruption, then places them in the broader context of Chinese society as a whole.
Vividly illustrated with photographs that capture the paradox of an ancient culture remaking itself into a dynamic consumer society, Dragon Rising is a wonderfully written, well-rounded, wide-ranging portrait of China's problems and prospects.
No nation on Earth is as newsworthy as 21st-century China—and no book could be timelier than Dragon Rising, appearing just as world attention begins to focus on the 2008 Beijing Olympics and China's all-out effort to present itself as a modern world power. As interest grows, Becker is the ideal guide to the profound changes that are already reshaping economic, diplomatic, and military strategies all over the globe.
Intertwining in-depth analysis with revealing anecdotal evidence, Becker addresses every major question. What form will China's government take? How will communism's legacy affect modernization? Can Shanghai's success with urban capitalism be replicated elsewhere? Will wholesale cultural and economic change be resisted by the millions facing sudden transition from an authoritarian state to a market-driven society? How will the new China cope with pollution, unemployment, and voracious demand for energy? Each chapter examines a specific region and such key local issues as poverty, minority unrest, and official corruption, then places them in the broader context of Chinese society as a whole.
Vividly illustrated with photographs that capture the paradox of an ancient culture remaking itself into a dynamic consumer society, Dragon Rising is a wonderfully written, well-rounded, wide-ranging portrait of China's problems and prospects.
264 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
3 people are currently reading
78 people want to read
About the author
Jasper Becker
21 books25 followers Jasper Becker is a British journalist who spent 30 years covering Asia including 18 years living in Beijing. His reporting on uprisings, refugees and famine in China, Tibet and North Korea garnered him many awards and he is a popular speaker and commentator on current events in Asia. He now lives in England and has just finished his tenth book, tentatively called The Fatal Flaw. Earlier books such as Travels in an Untamed Land, Hungry Ghosts or Rogue Regime had described the devastating impact of Communism on the peoples of Mongolia, China and North Korea. In City of Heavenly Tranquility, he laments the destruction of old Peking and the building of the new Beijing while The Chinese and Dragon Rising set out to portray the different sides of contemporary China. In Hungry Ghosts, the author had exposed for the first time the true madness and horrors of Mao’s secret famine during the Great Leap Forward. The new work digs into the flawed economic theories which lay behind Communism’s collapse and describes the economic theorists who got it right and the Western economists who believed the bogus statistics put out by Moscow and Beijing. He has also researched family histories of the early Shanghai capitalists who became textile magnates in Hong Kong. Under the pen name Jack MacLean, he has published an engrossing thriller set amid the drone wars in Pakistan and Afghanistan called Global Predator. Four of his earlier books on Asia have just been updated and re-released as kindle books.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 6, 2018
I've read this book as well as a few of his articles. He has a pattern of of showing his true feeling of china after the inital flattery and compliments. Then a much darker and uglier side reveals itself and it disgusts me.
Politics has always had a fixation on geopolitics, resources and hegemony. Countries such as The United States of America, Japan, Vietnam, Russia, South Korea and India all want to acquire China's territories and resources. As much I dislike Mao for the cultural revolution and great leap forward policy, I can respect what he's done for China. Without him, China would have been under the control of the US through the Nationalist government of China i.e military bases stationed in there.
Their strong, centralized government is what allows China to maintain a powerful military in order to prevent others from daring to openly challenge the country. Without it, another century of humiliation would have certainly occurred; where the propaganda used to invade the middle East will be put into effect this time against China. So it makes no difference if China became a democracy, because the US would still clash with China over hegemony in Asia. It's all about which country can control the most territories in order to acquire more resources than their rivals and doubt-inducing smear campaigns and puppet governments are historically not uncommon.
Good and evil concepts should be thrown out of the window when looking through a political perspective here. Because what China and US are really fighting about is power; not about peace, democracy and freedom.
The guy is really known for his critical views of china. The great leap forward over a 3 year period when china was still learning the early ropes, is fixated by him. The recent china that helped bring a record number of people from poverty to middle class would be downplayed by him.
If you want to read a book where a brit is biased against China's economic rise and patronise the chinese - you should read it. It seems his consistent fan base are made of people who really foams at the mouth whenever they hear china is doing well nowadays.
Politics has always had a fixation on geopolitics, resources and hegemony. Countries such as The United States of America, Japan, Vietnam, Russia, South Korea and India all want to acquire China's territories and resources. As much I dislike Mao for the cultural revolution and great leap forward policy, I can respect what he's done for China. Without him, China would have been under the control of the US through the Nationalist government of China i.e military bases stationed in there.
Their strong, centralized government is what allows China to maintain a powerful military in order to prevent others from daring to openly challenge the country. Without it, another century of humiliation would have certainly occurred; where the propaganda used to invade the middle East will be put into effect this time against China. So it makes no difference if China became a democracy, because the US would still clash with China over hegemony in Asia. It's all about which country can control the most territories in order to acquire more resources than their rivals and doubt-inducing smear campaigns and puppet governments are historically not uncommon.
Good and evil concepts should be thrown out of the window when looking through a political perspective here. Because what China and US are really fighting about is power; not about peace, democracy and freedom.
The guy is really known for his critical views of china. The great leap forward over a 3 year period when china was still learning the early ropes, is fixated by him. The recent china that helped bring a record number of people from poverty to middle class would be downplayed by him.
If you want to read a book where a brit is biased against China's economic rise and patronise the chinese - you should read it. It seems his consistent fan base are made of people who really foams at the mouth whenever they hear china is doing well nowadays.
January 9, 2008
I'd like to give this book 3.5 stars, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and round up. This book manages to give a solid, fact-supported account of the story of where China has been, where it is today, and where it may go. It looses some points though because the facts appear in such large clumps that one can't digest them all at once. At first I tried, but my attention would drift I'd have lost the thread of what the facts were about by the time Becker returned to the narrative. I found the book much more engaging when I skimmed over the denser fact-clumps.
November 25, 2017
Dragon Rising uses each geographical region of China to review an aspect of the country; Shanghai stars in a chapter on China's infrastructure projects, and other areas cover agriculture, manufacture and shipping, the environment, and so on. The final chapter is particularly interesting as it addresses China's influence on other countries in Southeast Asia and abroad, as in Latin America. The photography is beautiful.
May 15, 2022
Fascinating book, jam packed with detail, about modern Chinese economic and political history. Unfortunately it is dated because published in 2006. A very interesting and worthwhile read nonetheless.
September 3, 2007
I love the book but is also a little scary.
What I learned:
There is a town of Dongyang that produces 9 billion socks a year, more than enough to warm every pair of feet on the planet. In 1986, the country was served by fewer than 2,000 international telephoine and telex lines; now the country has more than 300 million mobile phone users, more than the US. In some areas, the government has developed 1st world infastructure and has 3rd world wages. If you are a manufacturer, how do you compete? While the book is not about facts and figures, it does add them in a powerful way to emphasize points.
The book provides insight into how China has been able to accomplish so much in the past 40 years and the implications for the future are enormous.
The section on Yunnan Provice and China's environment is a must read to help understand unbridled capitalism without the controls a democracy can have.
It seems to me that China is going through what the USA did from the 1850s to 2000 and is creating and having many of the problems and challenges of the US but in a much shorter time. With its 1.3 billion population and its economic success, China may soon become the most important economic player in the world.
What I learned:
There is a town of Dongyang that produces 9 billion socks a year, more than enough to warm every pair of feet on the planet. In 1986, the country was served by fewer than 2,000 international telephoine and telex lines; now the country has more than 300 million mobile phone users, more than the US. In some areas, the government has developed 1st world infastructure and has 3rd world wages. If you are a manufacturer, how do you compete? While the book is not about facts and figures, it does add them in a powerful way to emphasize points.
The book provides insight into how China has been able to accomplish so much in the past 40 years and the implications for the future are enormous.
The section on Yunnan Provice and China's environment is a must read to help understand unbridled capitalism without the controls a democracy can have.
It seems to me that China is going through what the USA did from the 1850s to 2000 and is creating and having many of the problems and challenges of the US but in a much shorter time. With its 1.3 billion population and its economic success, China may soon become the most important economic player in the world.
June 28, 2014
The photos of today's China are some of the best you've ever seen and then you realize why. This book was put out by National Geographic. Hence it looks like a coffee table book but it's so much more than that.
The author, Jasper Becker, breaks China down region by region focusing on the economic booms and fallouts of each from the "Rust Belt" northern industrial areas to the Special Economic Zones in southern China. It will definitely make you think about what sort of suffering you're supporting by buying those sneakers, electronics and pretty much everything else when you read about the coolie-like labor that gets used and abused in this system.
Becker also understands the need to present China's economic history which starts off the book for us to understand the type of capitalism the government has embraced now.
For anyone interested not just in the Chinese economy but the future of pretty much our 21st century world, this is a must-read.
The author, Jasper Becker, breaks China down region by region focusing on the economic booms and fallouts of each from the "Rust Belt" northern industrial areas to the Special Economic Zones in southern China. It will definitely make you think about what sort of suffering you're supporting by buying those sneakers, electronics and pretty much everything else when you read about the coolie-like labor that gets used and abused in this system.
Becker also understands the need to present China's economic history which starts off the book for us to understand the type of capitalism the government has embraced now.
For anyone interested not just in the Chinese economy but the future of pretty much our 21st century world, this is a must-read.
January 22, 2017
Note: I read the Turkish translation of this book.
An excellent book, giving a very in-depth and captivating vision of China at the beginning of the 21st century.
Also; the Turkish translation was perfect, it was a delight to read.
However, the version of the book that I read was printed in 2010; therefore, it was a bit dated.
If the author could update it with the latest developments since then, it would serve as an excellent guidebook to understanding the past, today (and possible futures) of China.
I would recommend this book.
An excellent book, giving a very in-depth and captivating vision of China at the beginning of the 21st century.
Also; the Turkish translation was perfect, it was a delight to read.
However, the version of the book that I read was printed in 2010; therefore, it was a bit dated.
If the author could update it with the latest developments since then, it would serve as an excellent guidebook to understanding the past, today (and possible futures) of China.
I would recommend this book.
February 13, 2017
I was looking for a book that would give details on what it was like to live in China today, but instead this was a very dry "this happened, then this, then this" history book. A perfect example of why I hated History in school.
February 5, 2016
Superb book! Very well organized and this is very important considering China is such a huge country. The information is impeccable and his conclusions are right on the money! I encourage all China-watchers to read this one!
March 31, 2016
Easy non fiction read about China economics by area. Brief history of China historical politics in first chapter. Book written in and 2006. Much has happened in China's geography and economics since then.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews