On China

Prior to the publication of this book the definitive resource on China was Jonathan Spence's "In Search of Modern China". Spence the Yale Professor, is still indispensible to a modern understanding of this remarkable country. Now there is a second more up to date source and that is Henry Kissinger. The former Secretary of State who is now 88 years fortunately has taken the time to put together this incredible piece of work that only he could have created. The book demonstrates the necessity of having lived a very long productive life and generating wisdom capable of distilling his understanding of a country down to a 530 page volume of work. It is as good as any of his previous works (13 with this one) and for my money I now put this book in Kissinger's top three, along with WHITE HOUSE YEARS and DIPLOMACY. First the MECHANICS of the Book If you are going to read the hard copy as opposed to digital, you are in for a treat. The font is beautiful, and the paper used to print the volume is delicious. I say this because if you are a heavy reader; you really appreciate turning the pages of beautifully textured pages. I annotate all of my books, writing in margins, in the back on blank pages and just about everywhere, and I love writing on beautiful page that take the ink nicely. This book was crafted professionally as good as it gets. The ORGANIZATION of On China The Secretary has made 40 trips to China in his lifetime, enough that he should be the Honorary Ambassador to the country. He is thoroughly infused in the history of China, and he certainly does give you the history. There are 18 chapters plus an epilogue spread over 531 pages. There are 36 pages of footnotes and it is obvious that the Secretary had considerable organizational help with the footnotes which is to be expected. The first three chapters or 91 pages are devoted to the nation's history and Kissinger gets it right. I have made many trips to China, but I still have problems with the language. When you read any book on China, you will have problems with pronunciation. What I do is quickly scan the book writing down 50 or a 100 names or terms I can't pronounce, and then head for the first Chinese restaurant in town, and ask for help with the words. People love to help, especially when you are taking an interest in their culture and language. The guts of the book begins on page 91 or Chapter 4 which is Mao's Continuous Revolution. This chapter is superb and superbly written. If you study American China relations, the question that is always stipulated is whether or not America lost China in 1949. Kissinger correctly reminds us that China might never have been ours to lose, so we asking the wrong question. Mao always believed that the Confucian order had for thousands of years kept China a weak China. Confucius preached HARMONY, and Mao believed that progress could only come from brutal confrontations both in China and with outside adversaries for China to advance. Mao also believed that these confrontations would happen naturally, but if they did not, he was not beyond creating confrontations even if they had to be within the Communist party to kept progress going, as he understood progress. Chapter 6 which deals with China Confronts Both Superpowers is another section that only Kissinger could have written. It is here that China confronts the Soviet Union creating the Sino-Soviet split, and the United States with the Taiwan Strait Crisis. The chapter is riveting, and will affect and change your understanding of history. MY ANALYSIS The book is indispensible. You cannot understand China and modern Asia without having this book under your belt. One would have to be foolish to visit China and not read this book first to truly benefit from such a trip. Mao was famous for the Long March, and this book is a long journey for the reader but it is very rewarding. The Secretary takes us through the Road to Reconciliation in Chapter 8, and then the first encounters with Nixon, himself and the Chinese leadership in Chapter 9. It is a fascinating portrayal of power meeting power head to head, and the respect that even enemies can hold for each other. It is now generally accepted that only Nixon the hardened right winger could have opened the door to China and brought the American people along with him, because he Nixon was viewed as tough. Perhaps in a decade or two, Harvard will accept what most historians have already accepted. In Chapter 11 we witness the End of the Mao Era. Zhou Enlai falls and Deng's first return to power begins. Kissinger loves writing about Deng and calls him the indestructible Deng throughout chapter 12. Keep in mind that it was Deng who opened up modern China and began the reforms that were necessary for China to assert itself years later internationally and economically. For those readers that know very little of China, this book is a whirlwind tour of a country fast gaining hegemony over Asia. You need to read Chapter 13 on the Third Viet Nam to understand how China is capable of dealing with its neighbors. Had we handled Viet Nam this way, the outcome and history would have been different. CONCLUSION: Henry Kissinger ON CHINA is destined to become a best seller and in the process will greatly help an America that knows very little about China except for newspapers, to understand not just the history of this vital country, but its future and the nexus of that future with America's future. No one can ignore China, so the sooner we as Americans gain the understanding that we need to make intelligent decisions, the better off we will all be. If you have an interest in China whatsoever, run to read this book, and do not put it down until you are finished with it. Good luck and thank you for reading this review. Richard C. Stoyeck ASSIDE: I will share something extraordinary with you. When you read a book like this, you will have a better understanding of China than 98% of the people living in China and 95% of the Chinese people living in America. I am still shocked when I meet Chinese people in this country young and old who have next to no understanding of Chinese history prior to Mao. They do not know the name Sun Yat-sen, or even Zhou Enlai, and forget about the Cultural Revolution unless they lived through it. Even the tragedy of Tiananmen Square is fast fading from memory. It reminds me of German history in the post Hitler period. Anybody in Germany who was educated post 1950 has very little to no understanding of the Hitler period. It is simply glossed over as a dark period in German history; the teachers do not know what to say. Just amazing.

Whether one admires Dr. Henry Kissinger or not, it cannot be denied the man was THERE and knew all the major actors on the world geopolitical stage for the past forty plus years. His very brief history of China's four thousand year history as a tumultuous state, indeed as the land that created "statehood" as it is traditionally understood, quickly gives way to a slightly more detailed summary of 19th century European colonialism in China. A people that have long seen themselves as living in "The Middle Kingdom" (or, as Kissinger explains, the center of the world, even the universe) depended on psychological and cultural superiority to absorb and transform their foreign opponents to Chinese ways of thought and action rather than through use of martial force. Kissinger quickly moves into the post- World War II era and the victory in 1949 of Mao Zedong's communist forces in the Chinese civil war. He details the reasons for China's intervention against US led U.N. forces during the Korean Conflict, moves on to Mao's break with the Soviet Union over his perception of Stalin's paternalistic and neo-colonial attitude toward a then weak China. He catalogs the missteps of Mao's leadership, including "The Great Leap Forward" - agrarian reform that lead to famine - and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960's which purged Mao's perceived opponents as well as so called revisionists, reactionaries, Confucians, intellectuals, military leaders, educators, bureaucrats, and any other "enemies of the state" perceived by the youthful cadres of the Red Guard; ultimately, those who rounded up these enemies were themselves rounded up and sent for "re-education" to collective farms or factory floors for years. "On China" became most interesting to me when Kissinger describes the difficulty and finesse entailed in the opening of US-China contact, culminating with President Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic and his meetings with Premier Zhou Enlai and Chairman Mao Zedong. Kissinger shares great insights into the personalities of these two men who partnered for more than forty years and guided China through tumultuous transformation. China's next leader, Deng Xioping, can perhaps be viewed as that country's modern day savior, the man who paved the way for market reform through his clear eyed, common sense approach to what was necessary to modernize the Chinese economy. This, of course, has led to China's ascendancy as an economic superpower which may one day eclipse all others. But with over 100 million people still living below the poverty line and an aging population of over 1.2 billion, China will be long beset by problems without easy solutions. Kissinger explains our relationship with the PRC from Presidents Nixon through Obama. He has often been an invited guest to China for forty years, making his insight and analysis current, intelligent, and compelling. Of course, he is only one man and imperfect as all men. But I hope those who lead our country in the future read this book as well as other works by Dr. Kissinger because his analysis of future trends in Sino-US relations may bear the fruit grown from his experience and wisdom. He describes pitfalls to be avoided, especially economic and military confrontation, as well paths of cooperation to be followed. I thoroughly enjoyed and learned a great deal from this book written by one of America's greatest elder statesmen.

This is an excellent book for our Americans to understand the Chinese international policy and behaviors in recent years. It details the philosophy of the Chinese from the latest 500 years of Chinese history. It also explains that reasons caused the hatred between Japanese and Chinese. Be very careful to understand the tricks that Japanese is playing now in the Pacific area, very similar to what the did before the second world war. We need to watch the growth of Japanese military power instead of the Chinese power because the bad tracking record of the Japanese invasion to the Pearl Harbor that killed the world peace and destroyed the power balance in Asia. It also describes the importance of a well maintained relationship among America and China for world peace. A good relationship not tension between US and China in eastern Pacific area is a better policy to keep a peaceful environment in Asia.

The book covers a huge historical period. It is true, however, that the first of a total of eighteen chapters plus an epilogue covers a period of millenia. It commences with the unification of China in the 3rd century B.C. and ends in the 19th century, a period of humiliation for China with incursions, depredations, and its semicolonization by the Western powers. The aim of this first chapter is to familiarize the reader with China's Confucian culture, its approach to Diplomacy and its conception of the Art of War. The balance of the book covers the remaining period to the present year. This latter period includes the very period of its humiliation including the notorious opium war, the 22 year civil war which ended with communism prevailing in 1949;the Mao era and the turbulent sixties with the Great Leap Forward which left in its wake 20 million Chinese dead from famine, the Cultural Revolution which nearly ruined China and forced Mao to reverse it. But it also describes the unprecedented growth under Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese leaders that followed him rendering China an Economic Superpower. The credentials of the author for writing the book are impeccable:the book was written 40 years after the author's first high level mission to China at the behest of president Nixon in 1971 and following 50 additional travels and discussions with four generations of Chinese leaders in the interval. The book aims, partly drawing on the discussions with Chinese leaders as primary source, to explain the conceptual way the Chinese think about problems of peace and war and international order, and its relationship to the more pragmatic American way. American exceptionalism is missionary. It holds that the United States has an obligation to spread its values to every part of the world. China's exceptionalism is cultural. China does not proselytize;it does not claim that its contemporary institutions are relevant outside China. But it is heir to the Middle kingdom tradition, which formally graded all other states as various levels of tributaries based on their approximation to Chinese cultural and political forms;in other words, a kind of cultural universality. At the time when Buddhism appeared in Indian culture stressing contemplation and inner peace, and monotheism was proclaimed by the Jewish - and, later, Christian and Islamic - prophets with an evocation of a life after death, China produced no religious themes in the Western sense at all. The Chinese never created a myth of cosmic creation. Their universe was created by the Chinese themselves, whose values, even when declared of universal applicability, were conceived of as Chinese in origin. The predominant values of Chinese society were derived from the prescriptions of Confucius (551-479 B.C.). Confucius was concerned with the cultivation of social harmony. His themes were the principles of compassionate rule, the performance of correct rituals, and the inculcation of filial piety. The Confucius canon would evolve into something akin to China's Bible and constitution combined. Its maxim the harmonius society. Confucius preached a hierarchical social order. Oriented toward this world, his thinking affirmed a code of social conduct, not a roadmap to the after-life. At the pinnacle of the Chinese order stood the Emperor, a figure with no parallel in the Western experience. He combined the spiritual as well as the secular claims of the social order. The empire was administered by high literate bureaucracy selected following national examination. In Diplomacy rarely did the Chinese statesmen risk the outcome of a conflict on a single all-or-nothing clash;elaborate multiyear maneuvers were closer to their style. Where Western tradition prized the decisive clash of forces, the Chinese ideal sressed subtlety, indirection, and the patient accumulation of relative advantage. China's most enduring game is wei qi. Wei qi translates as 'game of surrounding pieces;it implies a concept of strategic encirclement. Chess on the other hand, is about total victory. The purpose of the game is checkmate, to put the opposing king into a position where he cannot move without being destroyed. A similar contrast exists in the case of China's distictive military theory. Chinese thinkers developed stragetic thought that placed a premium on victory through psychological advantage and preached the avoidance of direct conflict. The seminal figure in this tradition is known to history as Sun Tzu, author of the famed treatise 'The Art of War'. What distinguishes Sun Tzu from Western writers on strategy is the emphasis on the psychological and political elements over the purely military. Where Western strategists reflect on the means to assemble superior power at the decisive point, Sun Tzu addresses the means of building dominant political and psychological position, such that the outcome becomes a foregone conclusion. The author is incisive in describing the personalities of Chinese leaders including Mao's and Zhou's:'The difference between the leaders was reflected in their personalities. Mao dominated any gathering;Zhu suffused it. Mao's passion strove to overwhelm opposition;Zhou's intellect would seek to persuade or outmaneuver it. Mao was sardonic;Zhou penetrating. Mao thought himself as a philosopher;Zhou saw his role as an administrator or negotiator;Mao was eager to accelerate history;Zhou was content to exploit its currents. A saying he often repeated was 'The helmsman must ride the waves.' When they were together there was no question of the hierarchy, not only in the formal sense but in the deepest aspect of Zhou's extraordinary deferential conduct.' And then we come to Deng. Mao destroyed China and left its rubles as building blocks for ultimate modernization. Deng was the builder. The China of today - with the world's second-largest economy and largest volume of foreign exchange reserves, and with multiple cities boasting skyscrapers taller than the Empire State building - is testimonial to Deng's vision, tenacity, and common sense. Mao had governed as a traditional emperor of a majestic and awe-inspiring kind. He embodied the myth of the imperial ruler supplying the link between heaven and earth and closer to the divine than the terrestrial. Deng governed in the spirit of another Chinese tradition:basing omnipotence on the ubiquitousness but also the invisibility of the ruler. Mao had governed by counting on the endurance of the Chinese people to sustain the suffering his personal vision would impose on them. Deng governed by liberating the creativeness of the Chinese people to living above their own vision of the future. In the epilogue the author outlines possible scenarios in the relationship between USA and China: The conflict scenario: The United States is more focused on overwhelming military power, China on decisive psychological impact. Sooner or later, one side or the other would miscalculate. The above scenario is countered by China's demographics and the capability of modern military technology. Another scenario is that the crucial competition between the United States and China is more likely to be economic and social than military. The author concludes appropriately the book with a wish:that the United States and China could merge their efforts to build the world.

There is no better analysis on China than this book. And it puts world peace in prospective, even now ten years after it was written

Kissenger es genial en su forma de abordar un tema tan complejo y su lírica es accesible y comprensible, la forma en que la va abordando los temas no deja cabos sueltos y aunque por momentos -sobre todo en la época de Nixon- se va por las ramas, en realidad es un texto muy concreto que toca los temas mas importantes sobre este fascinante país llamado China.

From the start to 2000s. Even though China has changes recently, it is still a great book to learn about how China got to where it is today. This book break through the mist about china and gets straight to the point. I highly recommend reading this book with an open mind.

Pela ótima introdução e motivos que é demonstrada hoje em dia, sobre o porque os comunistas chineses atualmente. For the great introduction and reasons that is demonstrated nowadays, on why the Chinese communists nowadays.