Understanding China: A Guide to China's Economy, History, and Political Culture

Excellent and eminently readable summary and balanced treatment of a controversial topic: contemporary China. Starr avoids many of the pitfalls of the China-U.S. relationship by neither demonizing nor praising the Chinese.

Deng Xiaoping was a pragmatist. For him, the Chinese economy moved rapidly from "central planning to market decision making. It is an economy with a large but shrinking state-owned sector, a substantial and growing collective sector, and a rapidly burgeoning private sector. Liberal use has been made of capitalist methods to jump-start and then fuel truly remarkable growth since the reforms began" (p. 73).

The ethnic groups that comprise China result in a Han version of racism. The Han, although they are not homogeneous show more in terms of language, customs, characteristics, or religion, nonetheless, "do think of themselves as ethnically distinct from the roughly 100 million people who are members of the fifty-seven other ethnic groups that make up the Chinese population" (p. 162).

"Capitalist industrialization can hardly be said to have proceeded without environmental damage, but as we have all seen in eastern Europe and Russia, socialist industrialization seems to have been especially pernicious in its effects on the environment. For one thing, with the land and its resources publicly owned, no one takes responsibility for the land or represents its interests. For another, water and energy are supplied to consumers at no cost or at a heavily subsidized cost, and there is no incentive to conserve their use. Worse, the deficiencies in the quantity and quality of land, air, and water are escalating rather than improving" (p. 177). show less

A utilitarian resource which provides a statistical and sociological framework for understanding modern China.

I came away with an improved understanding of the general direction of China going into the 21st century.

However, given the highly statistical and demographic focus of the book, the 1997 version is simply too outdated to recommend, given that there is a 2010 edition available.

I have not read the 3rd Edition. Based on the quality structure of the 1997 edition, I would recommend the 2010 version. However, do NOT pick up a used copy of the 1997 edition - it is simply too statistically outdated.

A Guide to China's economy, history, and political culture. 3rd edition