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Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China | 
| Author: Philip P. Pan
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $28.00
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Rating:  10 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 1416537058
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.2095109045
EAN: 9781416537052
ASIN: 1416537058
Publication Date: June 17, 2008
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Product Description
From an award-winning journalist for The Washington Post and one of the leading China correspondents of his generation comes an eloquent and vivid chronicle of the world's most successful authoritarian state -- a nation undergoing a remarkable transformation.Philip P. Pan's groundbreaking book takes us inside the dramatic battle for China's soul and into the lives of individuals struggling to come to terms with their nation's past -- the turmoil and trauma of Mao's rule -- and to take control of its future. Capitalism has brought prosperity and global respect to China, but the Communist government continues to resist the demands of its people for political freedom. Pan, who reported in China for the Post for seven years and speaks fluent Chinese, eluded the police and succeeded in going where few Western journalists have dared. From the rusting factories in the industrial northeast to a tabloid newsroom in the booming south, from a small-town courtroom to the plush offices of the nation's wealthiest tycoons, he tells the gripping stories of ordinary men and women fighting for political change. An elderly surgeon exposes the government's cover-up of the SARS epidemic. A filmmaker investigates the execution of a young woman during the Cultural Revolution. A blind man is jailed for leading a crusade against forced abortions carried out under the one-child policy. The young people who filled Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989 saw their hopes for a democratic China crushed in a massacre, but Pan reveals that as older, more pragmatic adults, many continue to push for justice in different ways. They are survivors whose families endured one of the world's deadliest famines during the Great Leap Forward, whose idealism was exploited during the madness of the Cultural Revolution, and whose values have been tested by the booming economy and the rush to get rich.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 An eye-opener for a Western reader interested in China September 2, 2008
Andrey Zubkov (Bridgewater, NJ USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book provides great insight into a handful of cases that highlight corruption, greed and failed politics in China over time. It will likely stir emotions in many native Chinese readers as a hard look at reality.
We all may have different views, theories and experiences with China. However, we all must agree that there is a need for greater transparency, improved human rights and a deep revealing look into the corruption of many highly regarded party members. No country is perfect, but China heavily struggles with aligning the interests of its citizens, with those of its few officials.
I read this book during the Beijing Olympic games. Afterwards, it made me pay extra attention seeing stories like today's "Two seventy year old women sentenced to re-education for attempting to register for the official protests", and "China Practically Unreachable By Western SMS?".
 Sad Important Read August 12, 2008
Jiang Xueqin (Toronto, Canada)
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
In his China book Philip Pan, former Washington Post bureau chief in Beijing, chooses to write about the heroic individuals who dared to defy the inexorable force that is the Communist Party of China. He writes about an unemployed documentary filmmaker Hu Jie whose life passion is resurrecting a young woman who dared speak up against Mao Zedong. There's this doctor who -- defying government censors -- revealed the SARS epidemic to the nation, thus saving thousands of lives. There are the labor activists who rallied their fellow laid-off workers against corruption. And then there are the lawyers and the journalists who are always pushing the envelope, trying inch by inch to create institutions -- rule of law and freedom of expression -- that can restrain the abusive authority of the Party.
Philip Pan is a very fluid writer but the book nevertheless feels thin. And worse than feeling thin it feels irrelevant and insignificant. Two thousand and eight is, after all, China's Olympic year -- when America's economy suffers from recession China's economy is booming. In surveys nine out of ten Chinese are optimistic and positive about their country and where China is heading. And the people that Philip Pan writes about so admiringly in his new book are the marginalized intellectuals and the disaffected poor who nostalgically yearn for a time that never was and dream of a future that can never be. And so for Americans and Chinese alike they're irrelevant and insignificant.
That's sad because Philip Pan and his heroes are right. China is a complete mess, and rather than being subversive these individuals who defy the system are the true patriots because with their criticisms and actions they are trying to make the nation-state stronger and more stable.
China right now suffers from a corrupt and ossified bureaucracy determined at all costs to maintain power. China's curious and cowardly blend of authoritarianism and capitalism means that China's Gini co-efficient is comparable to that of Latin America, its pollution problem is a national shame and seriously threatens China's future growth, and China never before has witnessed so much crime and moral decay. And yet -- because multinationals are still pouring into China, because Americans cannot shopping at Walmart, and because China itself is spending hundreds of billions on new infrastructure and factories -- the Chinese economy in the past two decades has managed to create a middle-class that is now the bedrock of Communist Party support. And what the middle-class in their steadfast support blithely ignores is that China's "socialism with Chinese characteristics" is a system built on contradictions and lies and illusions.
And that's what the characters in Philip Pan's book refuse to ignore. The Party's greatest contradiction, lie, and illusion is that it's possible to have economic reform without political reform.
Consider the free market. The free market needs independent media and channels of information to create efficient pricing and distribution and marketing -- but the Party insists on maintaining control over newspapers and the Internet. Now the Party may say that it'll allow economic reporting but not political reporting but what's important for the media to have any real impact on consumers is perceived independence -- so it's in the media's self-interest to report on SARS because that makes their economic reporting more credible.
Consider also the free movement of goods, which is crucial to the free market. The Chinese provinces are controlled by local party bosses which adamantly protect their self-interest and the interest of their constituents. So that means they'll protect local industry by preventing competition from coming into town -- which hampers the economy. And they'll also tax peasants, and steal their land.
So here the Party's interest in strengthening the Chinese economy is perfectly aligned with peasant lawyers who want to break the local tyranny of the Party bosses. But in these cases the Party chooses to side with the Party bosses. Why? Because at the end of the day the Party is only interested in maintaining its monopoly of power, and that in turn means turning a blind eye to the rapacious and corrupt behavior of local bosses in return for their fealty.
That is the sad unfortunate conclusion that the lawyers, journalists, and labor activists come to -- and which we also come to -- at the end of Mr. Pan's book. They always believed that they could change the system gradually from within -- and that weakness is ultimately what will make them irrelevant and insignificant in history's eyes.
As China's economic contradictions finally collapse into each other causing a financial earthquake that will rent society asunder this current generation of activists will be very soon supplanted by another generation of activists -- people who immediately see that the problem is the system itself, and their first reaction will be violence not discussion.
That's even more sad because in these individuals who believed in themselves, in China, and ultimately in the Party stood China's last best chance for real progress.
Amazing book July 28, 2008
sunshineyellow (Richmond, CA United States)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
There are a lot of excellent books on modern China out there, but this one is a cut above. I think, as a newspaperman, Mr. Pan knows how to grab and hold his reader's attention. I was unable to put it down for a few days. He also gets very deep into the story, talking to the affected people, but also putting everything into historical context. Lastly, I'm glad this book doesn't try to shoehorn everything into some grand hypothesis about China's imminent superpower status. I was happy to learn about the general trends of public discourse and human rights since the Mao era through the stories of some particular citizens who turn out to be heroes in their own way.
Out of Mao's Shadow July 22, 2008
Ann Ross
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Excellent. I couldn't put it down. I would like to read more about the people in China and their fight for democracy. I hope Philip Pan writes another book.
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