Quotations from Chairman Lee

A photo of Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew served as the first Prime Minister of Singapore.  He held the post for decades and guided the city-state through its rocky beginnings to becoming an "Asian Tiger."  Throughout his life, Lee Kuan Yew succeeded in taking Singapore from a weak former colony to an economic powerhouse.  He often courted controversy for his authoritarian disposition and his tendency to be "politically incorrect."  Several of his more famous and interesting statements have been collected in the book Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World.  

The book collects Lee Kuan Yew's statements  on topics ranging from the rise of China to Islamic extremism.  Lee's most interesting statements have to do with culture and the role it plays in the success of society.  He makes numerous statements applauding the United States's entrepreneurial culture and China's emphasis on saving.  For me, his realistic emphasis on culture and the role it plays in economic success and political stability run counter to the conventions of Western politicians.  The ethnically Chinese leader of a former British colony didn't have to worry about the international community branding him racist or imperialistic (though some still did).    

Lee didn't shy away from the fact that certain cultural attributes contribute to a nation's success.  Lee reshaped his nation after it gained independence by changing it to compete on a global scale.  His administration emphasized education and sacrifice.  It took only a few decades under Lee's guidance to raise the tiny, island nation of Singapore "from the third-world to the first-world."  It's certainly easy to find wisdom in Lee's speeches.  I wholeheartedly agree with Lee's critiques of welfare-democracies and socialism.   

Lee is famous for mentoring many Chinese leaders and still openly criticizing the Chinese Communist Party.  It doesn't take a genius to see the affect of Lee on Chinese government policies.  From his emphasis on societal order and the paramount importance of economic development, Lee's thinking certainly impacted generations of Chinese leaders.  I hope my nation of the United States never losses the "frontier spirit" that Lee admired in us.  We must take care of ourselves and each other.  We simply cannot depend on any government, state or federal, to effectively fulfill our needs as a society.  As Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Lee did shy away of asking this of his countrymen like most 21st century politicians.               

The Xi Jinping Era: Cheng Li's New Reference Book for Chinese Politics

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

Anyone interested in China has probably gotten their hands on this book.  A good deal of fanfare accompanied its release, and several of my favorite podcasts featured recommendations of the book.  So, does it live up to the hype?  Yes.  However, unless you're a serious China watcher, I wouldn't pick this one up.

This book is dense.  Like really dense.  It took me a long time to get through it.  In hindsight, I should have read all of the book's conclusion sections first, and then just read the chapters that interested me.  Much of the book's content consists of information about the composition of committees and governing bodies in the PRC.  Other than the noteworthy individuals, most of the names went in one ear and out the other.  However, the extensive profiling of politicians will make it possible to refer back to this book.  I expect to use this book when the next party congress happens.  This is the best reference book for Chinese politics.  The names of politicians, committees, and departments are indexed, making it easy to find information.  

The book's author

Cheng Li insists his approach to studying Chinese is quantitative because he uses numbers and charts.  Like many "social scientists," he cloaks his work in the cloth of science, even though nothing about it is scientific.  Adding charts and a large about of statistics, while useful, does not make something scientific.  

In the decades to come, prior generations will likely view this book as a great snapshot of foreign understanding of the inner workings of Chinese politics.  Xi Jinping's consolidation of power has revolutionized Chinese politics, and I must give great credit to Cheng Li for trying to make sense of post-collective leadership in China.  I must give him even greater credit for not shying away from the fact that Xi's revolution poses great dangers to the established orders both inside and outside China.   

The Three Body Problem: Beleive the Hype

The Book's Cover Features the Pyramid
from the Novel's VR Game.

It seems like people can’t stop talking about The Three Body Problem.  Winner of the 2016 Hugo Award, this book details the well-trod topic of humanity’s first contact with aliens.  The book courted controversy from many outspoken science fiction authors and critics.  Many felt that the book simply won awards because of organizations shoehorning in diversity instead of its merit.  While I can’t speak to the other nominees for these awards, I can say that The Three Body Problem deserves great praise for its originality and scientific concepts.  Yes, the “diversity is super good and necessary” thing has probably gone too far, but this book deserves the recognition. 

The book’s author is Chinese and all of the main characters are too.  Thankfully this saves us the trouble of reading/watching aliens destroy New York City for 4,000,000^th time.  The story opens during the restless days of the Cultural Revolution.  According to the translator, who was featured on the Sinica podcast, the book’s publisher altered the progression of the story so that the flashbacks appeared toward the middle of the book. They though publishing a book on the 50^th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution and featuring the period as a backdrop might result in undue scrutiny.  Frankly, it’s amazing these parts made it into the book at all.  I’d bet that if the book was published today, just a few short years later, some of these flashbacks would have been cut. 

I enjoyed reading a book that approaches such a common plot from a new perspective.   In some ways it’s a retread of Childhood’s End and other similar stories, but the book is never held back by this.  The book’s true originality comes from the computer game featured in the story and the alien world.  The parts of the book set in these two settings stand head-and-shoulders above anything I have read recently.  The sections set in the “real world” are less interesting.  The characters are two dimensional and even China itself seems flat.  I understand not including things that might date the novel, but there is almost nothing that fleshes out the setting.  Other than a passing reference to the CCTV Building and Tiananmen Square, this novel could take place anywhere.  The main character, Wang Miao, passively observes the story.  We learn very little about him.

       

If the Chinese characters in the story are two dimensional, then the foreign characters are simply lines.  The stereotypical dialogue makes them laughable.  A British military officer who appears at a meeting utters only one line, “To be or not to be.”  This line caused me to laugh while I read the book.  It’s interesting that the author of the novel writes dialogue for extraterrestrials more realistically than foreigners. 

Despite some literal shortcomings, no reader should miss this book.  The ideas and interpretations in the novel never fail to amaze.  I think the ideas in this book will keep readers talking about it for decades to come, just like the works of Phillip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clarke.  It’s less about character development and prose and more about thinking of humanity in a new light.  And in the end, it’s the ideas that make a story worthwhile.  

P.S. - the second book in the series isn't good.  Don't waste your time on it.  Just read the Wikipedia page and move on to book three.

Ghost Fleet: The Book Everyone is Talking About!

The Cover

Ghost Fleet, by P.W. Singer and August Cole, is a novel about a future war between the United States and China.  In the vacuum left by the death of Tom Clancy, authors have rushed in to fill the void with cutting edge military thrillers.  Ghost Fleet succeeds by using something that Clancy’s works had in spades...realism.  It excels when it focuses on the world in which the book takes place rather than the characters in the book.  The book is set at an indeterminate date in the near future.  The Communist Party has been swept away and replaced with an extremely meritocratic regime consisting of business and military elite.  This political transition occurred after the Chinese people became fed up with the corruption and ineffectiveness of the communist party.    

Published in 2015, the book references contemporary events in China, such as a holographic Xi Jinping expounding his Chinese Dream.  Besides referencing a two-child policy implemented by the new regime, nothing seriously dates the book as of this point.  Several interesting ideas make their way into the novel.  For example, an American insurgency on the Chinese occupied Hawaiian Islands and the use of a space laser to shoot down enemy satellites.  The most chilling aspect of the book is the Chinese military’s use of hacking.  The Chinese easily disable an American military overly dependent on technology.  The apathetic United States failed to prepare for a war that the Chinese were clearly fighting before the first shots were even fired.  It just goes to show that you can complain out intellectual property theft all you want, but at the end of the day, what we’re really doing is arming and transferring technology to enemies of the United States. 

Iraq-Style Insurgency in Paradise

I love the book’s fearlessness in confronting how future technology will change what it means to be human.  We’ve reached a point where technology can and will be implanted into the human body.  Increasingly people will need to constantly stay “connected” to be competitive for jobs, education, etc.  I’ve noticed that many recent science fiction movies and books side-step this issue.  In most films and books, technology is still something that you can just turn off.  In truth we never even turn off our cellphones anymore, because we feel that we can’t be out of contact.  What will life be like when they just implant the functions of the phone into your brain?  I find it incredibly unsettling that people will begin getting technology implanted into their bodies, and I think many other people do as well.  I tell myself that I’ll never do it, no matter how common it becomes.  The true of the matter is that when others begin doing it and reaping the benefits, such as faster access to information and interconnectivity, the rest of us will likely have to adapt or die.  In Ghost Fleet, many of the characters have technological implants.  What I found so realistic about the implants in the novel was that there are multiple types of implants serving different functions.

The book is ripe for a film adaptation, but I don’t expect one anytime soon.  With Chinese influence in America’s entertainment industry growing, it’s unlikely any major studio would touch a property that depicts a post-party China launching a preemptive attack on the United States.  Releasing that film would make the studio the target of cyber attacks and quickly get the studio locked out of the lucrative Chinese market. 

Oh well, the book is always better than the movie anyway.           

Paulson on China

None of us could ever love Henry Paulson as much as he loves himself.  I came to this conclusion early while reading his book Dealing with China.  That being said it's a really good read, and I recommend it for anyone interested in either Chinese or US politics.  For me, the most interesting thing about the book was Paulson dancing around the subsequent histories of some of the people he dealt with in China.  Gao Yan, Bo Xilai, and Zhou Yongkank all feature in the book.

Where in the world is Gao Yan?

Gao Yan - One of the PRC's most famous and wanted fugitives.  He fled the country with millions of dollars earmarked for power projects in 2002.  His location is still a mystery.  Paulson met with him shortly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and says that he was not apologetic and showed no sympathy for America's loss.  He took time in his book to highlight his personal dislike of Gao.

I found this very short section of the book fascinating.  Gao Yan worked for the State Grid Corporation of China, the mysterious and very politically powerful state power company.  Little is known about the inner working of this State Owned Enterprise (SOE).  Many of the nation's most important princelings spend part of their careers there, including the daughter of Li Peng who was implicated in the Panama Papers earlier this year.

Just like an episode of House of Cards

Bo Xilai - Paulson mentions Bo's larger than life persona.  The book also contains an aside about Bo's downfall and the earthshaking scandal that shook the Communist Party of China to its core.  The scandal surrounding his downfall contains many larger-than-life details, including his wife murdering a British businessman by poisoning him.  Supposedly the British businessman, Neil Heywood, served as the Bo family's "white glove", helping the family move illicit money out of China.  Some also speculate that he had a relationship with Bo's wife, dubbed the Chinese lady Macbeth.

Zhou Yongkang was famously
denied hair dye in prison

Zhou Yongkang - Zhou remains the largest "tiger" snared in President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption crackdown.  He was arrested a little less than a year before the book's release and convicted a few month's after its release.  Paulson doesn't have much to say about Zhou's character.  Interesting considering that the two probably had a ton of interaction and a relationship going back over two decades.  Paulson even arranged a meeting between Zhou and then-President George H. W. Bush.  It's likely that Paulson doesn't touch on Zhou's character or their personal friendship because Paulson knew he wouldn't be doing the disgraced CPC politician any favors.  Paulson also probably didn't want to link himself too tightly to someone who is rumored to have arranged the murder of his first wife and who has become the scapegoat for China's forced organ harvesting of prisoners of consciousness.

What Paulson doesn't say about these three rouges tells us just as much as what he does say.  His book is good and no one would dispute the fact that "Hank" is one of the smartest and greatest businessman of his generation.  Just be prepared to be constantly reminded of his environmentalism and altruism.  Basically, the only problem this book had is the same problem most autobiographies suffer from which can be summed up in one phrase: "I was right"

Banned Books and International Intrigue

That's the signpost, up ahead

I checked out People's Coffee and Books in Causeway Bay Hong Kong.  The bookstore specializes in books that are banned in Mainland China.  Many detail the personal lives of government officials or taboo topics such as the Cultural Revolution.    

In recent months, bookstores like this have become famous because of the kidnappings of store owners and employees.  The disappearance of employees at Causeway Bay Books, a establishment very similar to People's Coffee and Books, made international news.  The ongoing saga continues to unfold, highlighting tensions between Hong Kong and Mainland China.  Some of those involved even had to do televised confessions after resurfacing in Mainland China.  

Mall across the street from the
bookstore.  Notice the Finding Dory
characters.

Many in the former British Colony consider this a important example of China's increasing willingness to violate the "one country, two systems" agreement that guarantees Hong Kong a large degree of autonomy.  Though Hong Kong became part of China again in 1997, the territory enjoys personal and political freedoms only dreamt of in the rest of China.

Please checkout the links below for more information on bookstores selling banned books in Hong Kong and the ongoing disappearances.

Sign at street level

http://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-booksellers-disappearance-stokes-fears-over-freedoms-1452112200

http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/04/in-hong-kong-a-sanctuary-for-banned-books/274831/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/online-in-china-the-communist-party-and-military-are-at-war-with-ideas-a7130681.html

 






    

Remembering the Cultural Revolution

Frank Dikotter's (umlaut omitted) new book The Cultural Revolution: A People's History dropped a few months ago.  Usually the Chinese government considers the Cultural Revolution a taboo subject and glosses over it or omits it entirely from history.  This makes books like Dikotter's newest release all the more important, especially considering his place as one of the world's foremost sinologists.

Many of China's top party leaders faced persecution during the Cultural Revolution, including future paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and the father of the CPC's currently leader, Xi Jinping.  Despite this, China occasionally roles out the nostalgia for the period in the form of song and dance numbers during large public events.  I will admit, I often find this nostalgia for a period market by human suffering distasteful.

During the period between 1966 and Mao's death in 1976, Chinese citizens labeled class enemies faced persecution as the CPC attempted to erase the vestiges of China's past.  Priceless artifacts and buildings were destroyed as the communists attempted to eliminate anything relating to the country's past and "foreign influences" (except communism).  Douzheng (loosely translated as "struggle") between Maoist fervor and the "Four Olds" tore the country apart.

In China today, many claim there seems to exist a sort of collective amnesia about the Cultural Revolution.  I for one would classify it more as collective silence.  "Amnesia" implies that everyone has forgotten it.  Speaking with anyone who lived through those turbulent years will make it clear that no one has forgotten them.  People choose not to talk about the horrors and excesses of the period because the pain and suffering of the time remain a part of everyday life.  You still see its effects from the highest level of the government to the peeling paint from Maoist slogans fading on the sides of buildings.  

Though I haven't got a chance to read Dikotter's most recent work, I would definitely recommend his other books The Tragedy of Liberation and Mao's Great Famine.  Only by understanding the country's past, and examining how it is portrayed in the present, can foreigners ever hope to understand this complex country.  

Jack Ma - Face of a Changing Nation

The face that launched a 1000
delivery packages

While browsing at the New Orleans Public Library I stumbled across a copy of Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built.  The book is a great, easy read and sheds light on one of China's most important cultural exports, the eccentric business mogul.
 
In recent years, Chinese businessman Jack Ma has become ubiquitous.  You can see him everywhere.  From television to the internet and everything in between, Jack Ma is there.  In many ways he has become the face of Chinese business around the world.  Mostly for the better.  Say what you will about Ma, he is a fascinating individual.  His position at the forefront of China's economic expansion has done a great deal to bolster opinions of Chinese business abroad.  Ma projects what few other successful mainland businessmen do; a sense of transparency.  The man loves to joke and laugh, and his fluency in English goes a long way in projecting an image that translates well outside of China.  Just compare him to Chen Guangbiao (that guy who said he'd buy the New York Times).  Chen's downright buffoonish behavior has made him a laughingstock outside of his home country, despite his amazing professional success.  In many ways Ma serves as the antithesis of Chen, portraying a pragmatic and humble image that makes him something akin to China's Warren Buffet.

I recommend this book, but you
don't have to take my word for it.

Jack continues to battle it out with Wang Jianlin for the title of Asia's Richest Person.  In some ways, the two men couldn't be more different.  Ma has made a name for himself creating business practices that take advantage of circumstances in China, such as learning to work around the country's fractured supply chains.  Ma once called Alibaba a crocodile in the Yangzte River and compared his foreign competitors to sharks in the ocean.  Wang's relationship with foreign business is much more confrontational.  His recent, notorious spat with Disney shows this in spades.  His company recently acquired Legendary Entertainment.  The studio behind such blockbusters as The Dark Knight and World of Warcraft, demonstrating his "if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em" style of business.

His personal image and his reluctance to intentionally cultivate a cult of personality has distinguish Ma from his Chinese contemporaries and made him more accessible to a foreign audiences.  Ma's story is exceptional and inspiring.  I recommend this book for anyone trying to pierce the veil of Chinese corporate culture.