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EAN: 9780330451031 ISBN: 0330451030 Number Of Pages: 368 Average Rating:
 Rating:  - An Infinity of AbusesChina's rapid economic growth and the resulting improvement in millions' living standards are impressive, even when achieved at the hopefully temporary cost of massive environmental degradation. Pan, however, reveals that there are other major, though hidden, costs - all involving various abuses of the Chinese people. Further, it is easy to imagine that if China's only leadership were less paranoid and had less of an authoritarian history these abuses could be substantially reduced without hurting ... Read More Rating:  - Honest, but lacks perspectiveChina is a country without modern parallel. With 1.3 billion people, recent history of tremendous economic failure under Mao, and economic development over the last 20 years that is unmatched in the history of the world, this is a country of extremes. Philip Pan shows us only one side of the story. The China Pan describes is an endless plain of despair and discontent, with hardship and injustice for the masses and corruption based wealth for the few. The stories Pan tells are all true. ... Read More Rating: - Compelling snapshot of a closely-controlled society ...Interesting insight into the current Chinese government's power over their peoples. Compelling stories about some of the dissidents involved in the Tiananmen Square uprising and the country's continued crackdown on their citizens. Interesting read on how Western capitalism, though it appears only materially, has lulled the Chinese people into acceptance of their government's stronghold over this nation. Rating: - Out of Mao's ShadowPhilip Pan's book was excellent in understanding how the China of today has evolved. Each chapter is a story of how particular Chinese were involved in the history of the last 60 years of history. The reader should be able to understand how the last 20 to 30 years of Mao's reign, eratic as he was, effected the people of China. China was a closed society in the 50s and 60s, so information on the Great Leap Forward, the Red Guards and the Gang of Four is not readily known to most readers. Understanding ... Read More Rating: - casting light on a shadow.A mix of history and political analysis from a region and period in which records are systematically destroyed, and authors like Pan are fighting to preserve the truth. The book paints a picture of a modern Orwellian state, describing, in detail, the contortionist social policies of a communist party that managed to cling to power long after communism became internationally discredited. For example: the distortion of language for propaganda, the exploitation of nationalism, the systematic partitioning ... Read More |
