china's crisis, china's hopeby liu binyan
TRANSCRIPT
China's Crisis, China's Hope by Liu BinyanReview by: Donald S. ZagoriaForeign Affairs, Vol. 69, No. 5 (Winter, 1990), p. 206Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20044677 .
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206 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
This is an uneven collection of essays by a group of European China
specialists on the linkages between domestic and foreign policy in China. One of the more interesting essays, by Peter Ferdinand, explores the
phenomenon of regionalism. Ferdinand shows how many provincial lead ers have exploited the opportunity for greater autonomy on the domestic level while also becoming more sophisticated operators in the world
economy. The most dramatic example is Guangdong, which has become China's most successful export province. The central government in
Beijing has found itself unable to monitor adequately the local govern ment, and by 1988 the province had managed to continue to finance its own further development in defiance of a centrally ordered credit squeeze.
PROBING CHINA'S SOUL: RELIGION, POLITICS, AND PROTEST IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC. By Julia Ching. New York: HarperCol lins, 1990, 269 pp. $18.95.
This is a philosophical meditation on the recent tragic events in China by an eminent Sinologist known for her substantial contributions to the study of Chinese religion and philosophy. The effort at probing China's cultural tradition is praiseworthy but unsatisfactory. While the author sheds much
light on the malaise currently afflicting China's intellectuals, many of whom hold traditional Chinese culture as well as Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng responsible for the guns of June 1989, soul-searching at this level of
generality has serious limitations.
CHINA'S CRISIS, CHINA'S HOPE. By Liu Binyan. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1990, 150 pp. $22.50.
The author is a writer-journalist, former party member and Marxist
believer, who was purged from the party in 1957 and again in the late
1980s, and has been in the West since 1988. This book is based on a series of lectures he gave prior to Tiananmen plus a rather slight essay added after. His basic theme is the conflict between a rapidly changing Chinese
society and an unresponsive party leadership. He predicts that China will be democratized not by a Gorbachev but by conflicts between the local
regions and the center, in which democratic forces will gradually gain the
upper hand. There is a particularly interesting lecture on the Chinese
bureaucracy, which Liu estimates to number 20 million people.
RETHINKING THE PACIFIC. By Gerald Segal. New York: Clarendon
Press/Oxford, 1990, 400 pp. $64.00. A well-known British specialist on Asia pours cold water on the much
touted idea of a Pacific Community. He shows that the Pacific has never
been and shows no sign of becoming a coherent political entity and argues that the vital developments taking place there are best understood in a
broader global context including the decline of the superpowers, the new
paths of development in the Third World, and growing interdependence in the global economy. While it paints a broad picture, the book does not
really add any new or challenging insights to newly emerging dilemmas, such as the increasingly troubled U.S.-Japan relationship, which is covered in 12 pages.
COOPERATIVE SECURITY IN NORTHEAST ASIA. By R. Mark Bean. Washington: National Defense University Press, 1990, 198 pp.
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