BOOK REVIEW: ‘How China’s Leaders Think’

HOW CHINA’S LEADERS THINK: THE INSIDE STORY OF CHINA’S REFORM AND WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE FUTURE
By Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Wiley, $35, 600 pages

After the Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith returned from China in late 1973, he wrote about how a senior Chinese leader lit a match in front of the American visitor and let the match burn down. The host told his guest that while the ancient Chinese invented gunpowder, they failed to harness its full potential.

The lesson is well-known among China’s many nationalists irate over the aggression China suffered after Japan and the West mastered modern warfare. What was the Chinese leader communicating? That national power is the prerequisite for self-defense or for domination?

In “How China’s Leaders Think,” Robert Lawrence Kuhn insists that he can offer a reassuring answer. Impressively armed with a doctorate from UCLA in brain research and a management degree from MIT, Mr. Kuhn has authored about 25 books, runs a foundation bearing his name to promote ties with China and has visited more than 40 cities there, meeting with hundreds of officials. His extensively researched book is arguably one of the best surveys of China’s economic and social landscape during several decades of reform.

In several dozen well-organized, digestible chapters, Mr. Kuhn considers subject areas as diverse women’s rights, artistic expression, education, per-capita income and attitudes toward the West.

Overall, Mr. Kuhn often convinces. However, he too often resembles a bamboo pole that bends in China’s direction from the self-generated wind of good will. Surely a morebalanced or prudent perspective is called for.

Mr. Kuhn is correct that pride is one major emotion animating Chinese actions. It is based on the people’s cultural achievements and also on the stalemate that China forced during the Korean War. Beijing considers the conflict’s outcome the first one ever with the West that was not unfair to itself, so no wonder Beijing nixes unification. Galloping economic growth and the grandiose 2008 Olympics are also logs burning on the fire of self-esteem.

The author offers theoriginal - but unconfirmed - notion that when the United States accuses China of spying through people living in America, this galls the Chinese because it suggests that China’s technology is inferior. Some Americans might scoff at this idea, while others will believe it.

China’sleaders reject the destructive Cultural Revolution, but now face tensions from a growing range of social and economic classes and awful crimes such as school killings.

Mr. Kuhn is right that these leaders must generate jobs and provide social services, a fact that propels Beijing toward a commitment to long-term cooperation with its trade partners. Democracy is anathema, however, because China equates it with chaos. Mr. Kuhn quotes an official who claims that former President George W. Bush’s quest to export freedom is as dogmatically dangerous as Mao Zedong’sobsession with socialist purity.

Too inclined to agree, Mr. Kuhn might first reflect that Beijing wishes to be trusted. During the Cold War against the USSR, cautious Western analysts reasoned that a dictatorship that brutalizes its own people will treat foreigners worse. Can China escape that argument?

Also, Mr. Kuhn is remiss in not indicting Beijing for chronically understating itsdefense spending, even after former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld bluntly insisted on candor. Four decades after President Nixon scaled the Great Wall, the relationship should be too mature for such clumsy shenanigans from China. Surely, it should movecloser to the Singapore model of paternalistic - but trustworthy - politics, dynamic economics and social predictability.

Mr. Kuhn lionizes China’s leaders as responsible, another Chinese ideal. He cites its prime minister, Hu Jintao, as saying that “I usually go to bed quite late” afterpondering”how to provide enough food and clothing” to1.4 billion people. Described widely as a humble, intelligent man, Mr. Hu is the star of Mr. Kuhn’s profiling of the mainland’s elites. To back his assertion, Mr. Kuhn cites a 2008 poll that found that while only 23 percent of Americans approved of their government, 86 percent of Chinese did.

Yes, there is much to praise in modern China. Mr. Kuhnpre-empts the charge that he istoo solicitouswhenhe believably asserts that he financed the book and that his confident Chinese sources encouraged him to be factual.

Plus, he notes how the mainland suffers from myriad blights including lack of freedom, environmental destruction, social and economic inequality, tensions and protests and information control.

However, too often Mr. Kuhn kowtows topoliticians who need to be looked at straight on. For instance, he insults China’s millions of victims of human rights abuses when he says that “I know some of these leaders personally, and they are not dictators.” Surely, one can favor amity with China while also speaking plain truths.

The author says that he is “proud to be called a lao pengyou” of China; however, doesn’t he know that “old friend” here is the loaded compliment that Beijing’s hard men bestow on patsies and ingenues?

Mr. Kuhn wants to knock down the China-threat theory and supplant it with a “China model” version. However praiseworthy his desire for long-term cooperation, Mr. Kuhn himselfindicates that China must also be more flexible. He recalls that once he criticized Beijing’s rights abusesin front of a Chinese friend. The latter berated him with “you stupid Americans” blocked China’s original bid to host the Olympics. The lesson, observes Mr. Kuhn, is that Chinese nationalists - even moderates - will bite back at the West. Isn’t this closer to a confrontational and self-destructive chauvinism?

This reviewer rues the fact that recently in China, he saw collegians wearing t-shirts that said, “I love China only.” Also, some sources claim that the rising, fifth-generation leadership in Beijing will impose a deadline for the final return of Taiwan.

Mr. Kuhn must be commended for his energy, curiosity, encyclopedic grasp of a complex, sprawling topic and desire for peace between two powerful countries. However, such accordrequires that Beijing, not just its partners, understand that the strongest bridge is built from both ends toward the middle.

Victor Fic (vfic@hotmail) is a veteran analyst of East Asia based in Seoul.