The Coming Collapse of China

Rating:
Summary: A colossus on feet of clay
Review: At a time when almost everybody is enthusing about China and its economic prospects, this is a sobering book. Chang argues that the economic and political system of the People's Republic is teetering on the verge of collapse; in 5 to 10 years after China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) the whole house of cards will finally fall, and the Communist Party will be ousted from power in an eruption of violence. In Chang's opinion, neither the economic nor the political system can be reformed; the regime in Beijing will not win time during a slow process of reform ("crossing the river by feeling the stones"), but just make things worse as even more money is squandered by inefficient State Owned Enterprises and the corrupt Communist Party.

It is usually when people get overly optimistic and write books like "Dow 36,000" or "China as No. 1: The New Superpower Takes Center Stage" that things take a turn for the worse. Therefore, we should be glad that someone provides an antidote to the euphoria. After all, China and its 1.3 billion inhabitants produce an annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of just about the size of Italy's GDP. Italy has about 58 million inhabitants - and nobody considers Italy a superpower.

Gordon Chang's diagnosis is to the point. His prognosis, however, is debatable. After working for three years in Shanghai, I can only underline what Chang says about the sorry state of China's State Owned Enterprises and its banks. Doing business in China requires a good portion of sarcasm, and a lot of hope that despite the flaws in the system the whole state simply cannot collapse. In the words of a former executive of ING Bank: "The bad news is that the Big Four [banks] are insolvent; the good news is that they're sovereign." Chang's prognosis that China will collapse after 5 years because the country will honour its commitments to the WTO and open its economy to international competition is not very convincing. China will find ways to curb competition where it sees fit. Japan and the EU have been successful in protecting their agricultural interests for decades, and foreign banks have not managed to get a real foothold in the big Japanese market to this very day. In my opinion, the Chinese will be even more inventive in finding means to keep foreign products and services out of their country. No, the WTO is not the nemesis of Communism in China. Will the Communist Party be overthrown in a violent revolution? I would not bet on it. The Communist regimes in Eastern Europe went with a whimper (not a bang). Which will it be in China? I don't know. I don't pretend to know.

"The Coming Collapse of China" is an angry book written by the son of a man who "left China before the end of the Second World War and [the son] grew up hearing him say that Mao Zedong's regime would have to fall." The son returned to China to work as a lawyer in Shanghai. When he wrote this book - his first - it was a polemic in which he pounded away at the evils of Communism and predicted that Jiang Zemin's regime would have to fall. However, he would have written a better book if he had not tried to play the prophet (and defender of his father's faith). The best parts of the book are the stories in which he lets others speak for themselves, or when he pokes fun at the authorities. Unfortunately, he comes across as self-opinionated too many times. But don't let it irritate you: listen to the message even if you find the messenger annoying at times.

Rating:
Summary: open your eyes
Review: Firstly, I would begin by saying : "Congratulations on getting your first book published!".

The book title is very provocative and would compel any sinophile to read further. However, beyond the title, I found the book to be highly opinionated and inadequately substantiated.

Rating:
Summary: Gordon Chang Mea Culpa
Review: Go to Jamestown.org to read Gordon Chang professing his complete and utter ignorance -- slight exageration. Like all China experts (economists more or less excluded), Gordon Chang was trying to paint a picture of the place by viewing it through a straw.

I shouldn't rag on him too much. When facts repudiate his early analysis, at least he is man enough to retract his more egregious assessments.

So Gordon Chang gets 3 stars for sucking it up and being a man... but his book still deserves 1 Star.

Rating:
Summary: Pleasantly Surprised
Review: Having heard negative reviews from others (who apparently didn't read the book but were put off by the title), I was pleasantly surprised by Gordon Chang's work. It's one of the best written books on China I have read and presents thought-provoking conclusions based on sound economic and political analysis, which is still relevant two years after the book's publication, and despite growing euphoria about China's role in the world.

Mr. Chang's insights on China's teetering financial system, its links to the state-owned enterprises, and political/ideological constraints to full reform are especially thought-provoking, particularly now that the WTO timetable for opening of China's markets means that competing foreign banks will soon have access to Chinese customers.

Rating:
Summary: Look at China in a new way
Review: I picked this book as supplementary reading for a summer course I've been taking at NYU, I guess because the title made it sound more interesting than a lot of the other books on offer, and I really liked it. It's very contemporary, reads more like a magazine article than a history book, and what I particularly liked about it is the way the author sticks his neck out and doesn't mince words. Not one for wishy washy predictions, he says the Chinese govt will fall in 5 to 10 years, and he sets out to say why. You can tell he's lived in China because he uses examples from the street life there, not ones he's read about in the newspaper. I recommend this book--it's exciting. I felt I was on the cutting edge of some new idea, reading it. I don't really know if Chang is right, but his book's made me look at China in a new way.

Rating:
Summary: highly opinionated - few concrete facts
Review: Motivated by a recent visit to China I have begun reading a few books on the subject. G. Chang's has disappointed not so much because it is very pessimistic (as I am certain there are many reasons to be) but rather because of the few facts he delivers. There is a lot of repetitive argument but little to substantiate. For example the accession of China to the WTO is mentioned every so often as an immense problem, yet there is no concrete mention of the sort of problems this will bring China.

Rating:
Summary: Insightful and Beijing goverment actually responses...
Review: Pick up the book in Hongkong on my way to Shanghai. The inside look at China's SOE and bank and how they would cause the problems with China's future. It's a good reading for someone like me who's getting started with business in China.

Though the book is banned in China, I found a interesting Chinese publication called China International Business ... whose issue 174 has a cover story called "Breaking the Iron Rice Bowl." The issue discussed the problems with SOE and Banks. The magazine makes a complementary reading for the book. Some of the things Chang predicted that won't happen does happen. Privitization of SOE with private enterprise acquire SOE, massive layoff in the state bank and others.

One thing bad about the book is that Chang seems to lump sum the Chinese leadership as a collective like Borg in Star Trak. In reality, Chinese leadership is in constant struggle and prograssive and conservitive all win and lose sometime. WTO entry is a victory for the prograssive.

Also, I think Chang use too much Western standard judging Chinese politics. There are no "Read my lip" politics in Chinese politics. There are always something that can be done but never be said.

Rating:
Summary: Good Attempt
Review: The title of this book may appear unduly alarmist for many readers who have seen a decade of positive news reports of record-setting economic growth in an ancient nation which is home to nearly one-quarter of humanity.

But Gordon Chang cannot be easily dismissed as alarmist. As an American lawyer based in Shanghai when he wrote this book, he brings over two decades of China experience to his well grounded analysis of incipent problems in the Chinese financial and enterprise system and the contradictions between pursuing market-based reforms while maintaining a one-party monopoly on political power.

I recommend that the prsopective reader not be put off by the alarmist title nor the recurrent attempts in the book to play soothsayer when hard-nosed analyst would have seemed sufficient. One might even suspect that this son of an emigre from China who left before the Second World War has an ax to grind. None of this should detract from what is otherwise a soundly written book. In fact, events since this book was written, including the recent SARS episode, give further food for thought to the central thesis of this book.

This book is important for anyone who recognizes that the trajectory of political change in China will have deep implications of how many global trade, environmental, and security issues will be resolved in the twenty first century.

Rating:
Summary: Thesis of this book contradicts the facts
Review: There ARE many things wrong with China, and Mr Chang, an American-Chinese lawyer, goes to great lengths to tell us about them in lurid detail. He sees the China glass not merely as half empty, but as completely drained. However, as anyone who has visited the country in the last two decades can attest, China has also done many things right, especially in terms of economic development. China is well on its way to replacing Japan as Asia's economic superpower. The vast majority of Chinese people are vastly better off today than they were twenty years ago, and they know it.

China can sometimes be a frustrating country, and one cannot help but wonder what personal or professional trauma led to the deep animus against China that Chang displays in this book. If your interest is in China-bashing for the sake of China-bashing, you may want to add this boook to your library. If your interest is in the facts about both what is wrong and what is right with contemporary China, skip this exercise in venting personal hostility.

Rating:
Summary: "No one will own me." ---Becki Hu
Review: Who or what group will "own" China in the decades ahead? Gordon Chang doesn't say who, but he bluntly asserts that change--catastrophic change--is coming to the People's Republic of China in the next five to 10 years. His views are based on careful consideration of many facts, and he may be correct.

"The Coming Collapse of China" is written in a lively, journalistic style, and each chapter stands on its own as an interesting and insightful essay. The chapter titles themselves are intriguing, e.g., Lake of Gasoline, [e-mail], Biting the Snakes, Highway Girls. And Chang, a U.S.-born Chinese who has lived and worked in China for nearly two decades, writes from his heart as well as his mind.

From my own travels in China, I have found that the Chinese Communist Party is increasingly challenged to remain relevant, particularly so as China has opened up in recent decades and enjoyed economic growth. Chang agrees, and forcefully makes the point that the Chinese experiment in reforming markets under central control could go terribly wrong. That would be catastrophic for China and a blow to its trading partners.

For one example, Chang points to Shanghai and the overbuilding that occurred there in the 1980s-1990s. Now, with occupancy rates as low as 30 percent (I have seen new, vacant office buildings there), and investment loans to repay, what's to be done? The central government can prop up only so many failed enterprises, and fewer once membership in the World Trade Organization is conferred.

Chang also cites acts of violence by unnamed groups--terrorist acts--which the CCP is reluctant to admit. The series of blasts that ripped through the heart of Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei Province in March 2001, and which officials blamed on a lone fugitive, Jin Ruchao, could not have been the work of one man, Chang asserts.

Does Chang see any hope for the future? Indeed he does. The penultimate chapter explores whether or not the Chinese state can evolve. Informing us that most of the progress that China has enjoyed since 1978 has been the people's, not their government's, Chang quotes dissident Wei Jingsheng: "The laws of history tell us that only when the old is gone can the new take its place."

This is not a position to be taken lightly, for the implications of change are profound, not only for China but for the region and the world.

Still, give the CCP and its recent leadership some credit. It was the "four modernizations" of Zhou Enlai and implemented by Deng Xiaoping that set China's economy rocketing forward by adjusting ideological precepts to mesh with free market economics. Jiang Zemin has also been active and effective in global outreach, and in presenting China's (and the CCP's) case before world leaders.

There are alternative views, some complementary to Chang's, and others less so. The great value of Chang's work is that he presents a position that is clearly at one extreme, and does so with a depth of knowledge and experience that can not be easily discounted. Extreme positions, of course, help to provide clarity to analysts who seek to compare various viewpoints and beliefs. In this regard, I found it instructive to revisit two other works: "China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power" by Nicholas Kristof and Cheryl WuDunn (Vintage Books, 1994), and "China Debates the Future Security Environment" by Michael Pillsbury (National Defense University Press, 2000).

Kristof and WuDunn provide ample supporting evidence to bolster Chang's thesis. Pillsbury presents an irony, which is that Chinese defense analysts calculate "comprehensive national power" and use this measure to show that the United States is in decline, which will lead to a multi-polar world in several decades and of which China will be one of five poles.

Chang's observations contrast with the behavior and attitudes of senior colonels in the People's Liberation Army who I count as colleagues. These "Young Turks" are making up for lost time. Increasingly well educated and with international travel and living experience, most remember the Cultural Revolution when they and their parents were sent into the countryside to "till the night soil." A return to the past is not in their thinking. They have an enthusiasm for progress and for maintaining a balance and order in China, and regarding the central government it is they who will be the "new" that takes its place in the next five to 10 years.

In the final analysis, the question remains: Who will own China? For over 4,000 years Chinese emperors and dynasties have come and gone, and always change has been manifested by the strength of will of its people. That's your answer.

Postscript: Becki Hu was my seat mate on a trip to China a few years ago. Confident and assertive, she told me "no one will own me," as she embarks on her future, and "I may stay in the U.S., or go to Australia, or back to China." She recently completed two master's degree programs at a small college in Ohio, and returned to Shanghai to begin a career in information technology. After six months at home she was no longer so sure that her future there was as bright as she had thought. "I seem to have been lost by China," she wrote.