Empire of Lies: The Truth about China in the Twenty-First Century
The Western press these days is full of stories on China’s arrival as a superpower, some even warning that the future may belong to her. Western political and business delegations stream into Beijing, confident in China’s economy, which continues to grow rapidly. Crowning China’s new status, Beijing will host the 2008 Olympic Games.
But as Guy Sorman reveals in Empire of Lies China’s success is, at least in part, a mirage. True, 200 million of her subjects, those fortunate enough to be working in an expanding global market, enjoy a middle-class standard of living. The remaining one billion, however, are among the poorest, most exploited people in the world. Popular discontent simmers, especially in the countryside, where it often flares into violent confrontation with Communist Party authorities. In truth, China’s economic miracle” is rotting from within.
In this extraordinary book, Sorman explains how the West has conferred greater legitimacy on China than do the Chinese themselves. He has visited the country regularly for forty years and spent most of the past three years exploring her teeming cities and remotest corners. Empire of Lies is the culmination of these travels and perhaps the only book on China that lets the Chinese people speak for themselves.
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The East Moves West: India, China, and Asia’s Growing Presence in the Middle East
During a period when established Western economies are treading water at best, industry and development are exploding in China and India. The world’s two most populous nations are the biggest reasons for Asia’s growing footprint on other global regions. The impact of that footprint is especially important in the Middle East, given that region’s role as an economic and geopolitical linchpin.
In The East Moves West, Geoffrey Kemp details the growing interdependence of the Middle East and Asia and projects the likely ramifications of this evolving relationship. Geoffrey Kemp, a veteran analyst of global security and political economy, compares and contrasts Indian and Chinese involvement in the Middle East, stressing an embedded historical dimension that gives India substantially more familiarity and interest in the region.
Does the emergence of these Asian giants with their increasingly huge need for energy strengthen the case for cooperative security, particularly in the maritime arena? After all, safe open sea lanes remain an essential component of mutually beneficial intercontinental trade, making India and China increasingly dependent on safe passage of oil tankers. Or will we see reversion to more traditional competition and even conflict, given that the major Asian powers themselves have so many unresolved problems and that U.S. presence in the area may be on the decline?
In many ways, the growing Asian presence in the Middle East comes as a breath of fresh air in comparison to the bitter historic legacies of European dominance and the contemporary antagonism toward America’s hegemonic role. The major Asian players in the Middle East feel no guilt about the past, and they have no emotional stake in the Arab-Israeli conflict. On the one hand, this means they approach the region’s many unresolved conflicts with what some would argue is a cynical, laissez-faire attitude. On the other, it means that they have refrained from interfering directly in Middle East politics and therefore enjoy good relations with most states. It is unclear how long they can sustain this hands off approach if, by virtue of their economic dominance and their own strategic stakes in the region, they get drawn into the messiness of Middle East politics at a time when the United States becomes disillusioned by the burdens of hegemony.
—Geoffrey Kemp in The East Moves West.
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The mask ripped off, the Potemkin Village blown up,
Economic conservatives and neoliberal “spinners” from James Fallows and Reed Hundt through Bill Clinton (singled out in one passage) are exposed as frauds, liars and enablers for a China of modern myth in this power-packed new book.
French journalist, politician and philosopher (and why can’t we get that combo in America), exposes the lies of both the Chinese Communist Party and its Western apologists, which range from hardcore economic conservative American capitalists to French communists.
There’s a few basic lies that underscore the scores of surface lies both the Chinese Party and its western enablers tell.
Sorman says Lie No. 1 is that capitalism will lead to democracy. He has a clear, albeit much smaller, counterexample – Singapore, led by, ironically or not, Chinese.
Lie No. 2 is that there is a “Chinese mindset,” “Chinese way of business,” or whatever, that is antithetical to democracy. Variants of that include references (usually wrong ones, according to Sorman) to Confucianism, etc. Counterexample? Taiwan. Daoism, repressed in China, flourishes there along with Confucianism, Buddhism and Protestant and Catholic Christianity — along with traditional Chinese culture.
Lie No. 3 is the lie of Chinese economic statistics. Sorman says that even if you don’t discount the costs of environmental degradation, Chinese growth rates are almost surely somewhat overstated, and possibly highly overstated.
Lie No. 4 might be a partial variant of No. 2, and would be the “China isn’t all that bad” lie, especially if you compare it to the former Soviet Union. Sorman argues the other way around, that China is arguably more repressive than the Soviets of Khrushchev and beyond, at least in some ways.
As a result of all this, Sorman says, we really don’t have that much to fear from China as a foreign power in general or a military adventurer in particular. On the economic side, in fact, he expects the rich-poor gap to be likely to worsen, not improve.
Another “sublie” would be the one that Western countries, through “economic involvement” with China, can moderate its behavior. China isn’t going to be moderated by that. And, as a sidebar, Sorman estimates that about half the Western-owned factories in China are money-losers.
Read this book and get an unvarnished view of today’s China.
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|Excellent critique of China,
Sorman has written a good summary of China’s problems caused by the totalitarian Communist government. One has to feel a bit sorry for China’s Communist leaders, as they are riding a runaway horse they cannot get off from – because the current political and economic system cannot go on (although like Gorbachev, they may not know it). However Sorman tends to overstate his positions (it’s unlikely that almost all foreign investors are losing money in China for example) while some of his assertions could be backed up with some very persuasive evidence (the problem of bad loans in the banking system for one). The real value of the book is his conversations with Chinese both within the Party and those opposed, and his conversations in Taiwan. These are really illuminating.
The book was probably written more for the European (and especially French) intelligentsia with their love of socialism and a social and political order led by the properly academically qualified (somehow they seem to have forgotten that the intelligentsia were the ones murdered, tortured-frequently to death, exiled, and assaulted by their beloved Mao’s Cultural Revolution). But their support of the Communists also allows them to satisfy their anti-American feelings.
So the book is a good summary of the political and economic problems facing China under the current system, although his points could be better documented. The translation unfortunately is not very good.
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|Not Quite the Sleeping Giant Yet,
Much is made in the West today about the growing power and growing economy of China. Many fear that China will dominate the world by the end of the twenty-first century.
French writer Guy Sorman takes a different view in “The Empire of Lies”. He interviews several people, including dissidents, in an attempt to uncover the truth about China today. Sorman believes that the Chinese economy is not growing as quickly as advertised, and that there is much discontent, especially in the countryside. The institutions in the country, he believes, encourage short-term thinking–this retards economic growth. In contrast to many in the West, he thinks that China will not be able to conquer Taiwan in the near future. Sorman also takes a look at religion and the persecution of religion by the Communist Party.
Sorman asserts that the West has had a tendency to misread China for centuries, and that it still does so today. Unlike many in the U.S. and Europe, he says that there is no reason to fear China at this time.
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|Kemp on India and China in the Middle East,
Geoff Kemp has been one of the leading commentators/analysts on the Middle East for the last several decades. This book follows in that tradition, and is well worth buying. It has helped my own research immensely.
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