On China. Henry Kissinger (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
The value of this book isn't in the quality of its writing (Kissinger isn't a great writer), or in its scope (he glosses over huge parts of China's history), but in the author's direct experience of participation in China's rapprochement with the West. He shares personal recollections of events and characters that shaped the modern China, like nobody else could, but someone who was there and met them in person.Don't read this book to learn about China's history and politics. There are better books and materials for that. It's best to have an idea of it before reading this book, and then you'll appreciate very detailed illumination of selected events in China's history. The book gives a great insight into the world of cold war politics and diplomacy. The author illuminates motivations of leaders and places them in the larger context of power games between China, the US and Russia. It also provides a glimpse of moral compromises and trade-offs that must be made in order to achieve political goals, while dealing with dictators.I listened to an audiobook version of this and was impressed with the reader. He obviously speaks Mandarin, since he pronounced all names with correct Mandarin tones, which sounded a bit awkward at first, but which, as a student of Mandarin, I appreciated. "On China" is authoritative, scholarly and dull.Kissinger puts us on the Chinese History Interstate Highway beginning more than two millennia ago. We travel in fifth gear from the time of Confucius, the purpose of which is to give us China's position in the world from a Chinese person's point of view, and get off at the beginning of the nineteenth century. We then travel through that century, in stop-and-go traffic, as Great Britain attempts to take China over in somewhat the same fashion as it took over India. That last dynasty is on its last legs when we enter a black hole.We come out of the black hole in the late 1940's. Sun Yat Sen? Japanese occupation? The People's Liberation Army has driven Chiang Kai-shek off the mainland and Mao Zedong is in charge and we travel through the next part of the story in a comfortable second gear.From that point on, the book is about China's leaders rather than about China and that's why it is so dull. It could have been entitled "On Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping" It is all about how those three managed relationships with countries on their borders -- the Soviet Union, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, with honorable mention to India and Japan -- and took advantage of the Cold War to enlist the help of the United States.We then travel in third gear from the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Deng's retirement to the present. That's it.So, if that's what you care to read about, go ahead.
What do You think about On China. Henry Kissinger (2012)?
It's wonderful to hear a nuanced history by one who has been an active and intelligent participant.
—Yess
Cool book.And yeah, he likened Chinese way of thinking as Go.
—bigdixon
Kissinger and history in my lifetime, a must read...
—pmur22
