I finished China Shakes the World this evening. It was not by choice that I read this book--it's not my type. The living-learning program I run is reading the book as part of the inagural summer reading program at U of M. All my students are reading it...
Well, I'm just not that interested in business and economics. I found the chapter on environmental concerns interesting. Overall, I found the book frightening. Especially the last chapter... China is growing and expanding, people are living better, there are greater opportunities, education is flourishing--all that is great. But the scary part is the limited resources that everyone in the world is competing for (and the implied lengths they will go to in order to protect their share or gain new resources), the lack of concern about the environment, the nuclear weapons... I don't know that I can pull my thoughts together better than that... Everyone who has read the book has said that Kynge presents a balanced view, but it didn't seem that way to me. I don't know. I'm not good at reviewing...
James Kynge is coming to campus on Sept 18th to give a talk based on his book. I'm very curious to see what he has to say. I hope it will be interesting.
I'm also curious about what my Chinese students will have to say about the book... I know many of my students have found it deadly boring. Well, this should be interesting...
Why couldn't we have stuck with a nice book like A Thousand Years of Good Prayers? That was a nice little book with many interesting different stories touching on the lives of different people and highlighting different cultural aspects of China. That would have been so much better, in my opinion... Oh well. *sighs*
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