Reading Notes from James Kynge's China Shakes the World
Reading in this holiday season: China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future -- and the Challenge for America. It's a very well-researched and insightful book with a very vivid and engaging narrative that the author James Kynge had to offer.
How does a national populace of 1.3 billion, the largest in the world, affect politics, economics, and society? What of the psychological impact, accumulated over centuries, of living as a single unit among a multitude so forbiddingly huge? Most of the Chinese to whom I have addressed these questions have shrugged, as if they were futile or the answers blatantly obvious. Nevertheless, intimations of a profound legacy are everywhere, embedded in human behavior, in the attitude of the state toward order, on every page of a turbulent history, and in the governing relationships of commerce.
