The Chinese Brezhney
Terill, Ross
Books in Review - "The Chinese Brezhney"
...No Asians, Africans, or Latin Americans...
...Not enough, however, for the supremo to unblock this and other foreign websites...
...He got ready for bed in the dark...
...Any disapproval of Jiang by another Chinese politician can only signify envy to Kuhn...
...Will Jiang, beaming in his black suit and red tie, be judged a Chinese Brezhnev, as economic boom and nationalist spirit hide a coming political collapse...
...Nimbly, he avoided major trouble in the leftist squalls of Mao's Cultural Revolution...
...His current book, The New Chinese Empire, winner of the 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, is out in paper-back...
...Kuhn is correct to say that "electronic messages zip-ping around China exemplify an increasingly dynamic and unafraid populace," but he makes no assessment of how China's old politics will eventually be changed by its new society and economy...
...Gitmo jai Nuke revi 1. Real...
...We have striking details about Jiang but little analysis of whether the former supremo, now replaced by Hu Jintao, another engineer, undermined Chinese Communism or rescued it...
...The author eagerly takes Jiang's side against Clinton...
...Jiang maintained Dengism...
...68 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 2005 The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin by Robert Lawrence Kuhn (CROWN, 709 PAGES, $35) B O O K S I N R E V I E W second book is tortured and confused...
...The first book traces Jiang's upbringing in Yangzhou, an ancient city a few hours northwest of Shanghai...
...kindness to family and friends...
...We often have a tough time getting out of here," remarked one player...
...The pomposity and political correctness rival Kim I1-Sung...
...It is condescension to the Chinese to imply that, because they are not Westerners, they don't want the rule of law, choice in marketing their crops, and a free national vote for president of China...
...Both engineers danced (Jiang maybe with a lighter step) on the deck of a sinking ship...
...The home was rich in books, musical instruments, reading of Tang and Song dynasty poems, and the practice of calligraphy...
...He merely follows liberal American Sinologists who feel you can't possibly call enlightened people rightists...
...Kuhn cites Jiang's earnest speeches against corruption but SEPTEMBER 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 69 BOOKS IN REVIEW fails to align them with Jiang's phoning a bank chief to suggest a loan for an old Jiang work mate...
...Or has Jiang given the Chinese Communist regime at least the extra 18 years that would allow it to match the 74-year life of the Soviet Union...
...The Communist Party, said its unelected leader, must be representative of "the most advanced productive forces, the most advanced culture, and of the people's interests...
...He was not really the "man who changed China...
...7.9S US • $8.95 1E III 'AUTO''3-DIGIT 104 540252-1 T AS 06106 FORDHAM UNIV LIBRARY 441 E FORDHAM RD S38E BRONX NY 10458-9993 1/5 75470 645°1: B O O K S I N R E V I E W The Chinese Brezhnev debris after an explosion...
...Then I realized what was going on...
...The phrase might have made a more apt title than The Man Who Changed China...
...Mao Zedong, warrior and philosopher, the Marx, Lenin, and Stalin wrapped into one of the Chinese Revolution...
...In Deng's Beijing he became a Vice-Minister of Electronics and joined the enchanted circle of the Central Committee of the Communist Party...
...I cannot say Kuhn's torrent of praise for Jiang is not factual, yet no sign exists that Kuhn ever talked to a Chinese, or read a Chinese document, seriously critical of the near perfect Jiang...
...Hilariously, citing Chinese (who know very well that leftism is not Straw men jump from his pages like bamboo after spring rain...
...It certainly is an advance that Jiang called Confucius "a great educator in ancient China," whereas Mao called him "a stinking reactionary...
...skill at foreign languages...
...One is an engaging story of a Chinese engineer and politician in a maelstrom of war, civil war, revolution, and Communist-style modernization...
...Straw men jump from his pages like bamboo after spring rain...
...A screening committee chose banal questions from a huge number submitted...
...When, later, Jiang actually became vain—shouting at Hong Kong journalists, combing his hair before the King of Spain, losing his temper as protesters appeared at his welcoming ceremony in Switzerland—Kuhn makes excuses...
...But Kuhn fails to differentiate "Jiang theory" from Deng's prior crack at theory...
...Don't underestimate Chinese civilization's capacity to spring a surprise...
...Jiang first saw the West in the 1980s when he visited the U.S...
...And from the mid-1990s to 2002, Jiang Zemin, a skilled engineer who adjusted the nuts and bolts of a hybrid edifice...
...on a U.N...
...inspection tour...
...Excuse me, to most Chinese also...
...Does Kuhn think Mongolia and Taiwan are not democracies because they are not "Western-style...
...That Kuhn, who is an advisor on economics and media to the Chinese government, does not see this skewing his picture of Jiang betrays Kuhn's innocence of the systemic problem in writing about Chinese politics...
...you drop Marxism but retain Leninism, as Deng and Jiang did, you postpone a reckoning with a vacuum of values in society, tension between economics and politics, and a schizophrenic foreign policy...
...B O O K S I N R E V I E W conservatism) calling Leninists "leftists," he him-self, when the quote marks end, doggedly calls the same Leninists "conservatives...
...Since money was tight, she shopped the markets, bargaining with street vendors to save pennies...
...he did not replace it with Jiangism...
...Late 21st-century readers are unlikely to read biographies of either Jiang or Brezhnev...
...Gangs have attacked the bus with rocks...
...Keeping his head as others around him lost theirs was one of his specialties...
...But this book does not shake my feeling that the Chinese Communist Party's monopoly on political power has only a decade or two to run...
...Repeatedly Kuhn says "Westerners" may think one way on democracy but "Chinese" think another...
...In this sleight of hand, Kuhn is not to blame...
...On all this Kuhn offers new material...
...Jiang joined the Communist Party at the age of 19 and became a power engineer, beginning in food and soap factories in Shanghai...
...Jiang, like Brezhnev, presided over a Communist Party running out of steam, intellectual honesty, public trust, and faith in Communism...
...enthusiasm for science and the arts...
...Of course, Chinese critical of Jiang would not have talked to Kuhn for attribution, but there are ways for an objective biographer who can read and speak Chinese—neither point applies to Kuhn—to mitigate this major handicap...
...The actual evi70 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 2005 dence of the biography is that Jiang simply carried on—without major mishap—Deng's departures from Mao...
...An Army of One A FEW YEARS AGO my son played football at Stuyvesant High School in New York City...
...Kuhn nicely captures Jiang as a symbol of change from class struggle in the 1960s Cultural Revolution, through pro-democracy at the time of Tiananmen Square in 1989, to nationalism in the 1990s...
...Jiang's side against murmurs of criticism from "political rivals...
...That China was not a democracy in the Western sense was clear, but neither was it a dictatorship...
...Rather than call pro-individual and pro-market Chinese "rightists," which they are, he prefers the Delphic "Those on the other end of the political spectrum...
...Especially does Kuhn get lost in Jiang's would-he theory of "Three Represents...
...At work she was warm and low key, and after work she would rush home to care for her family...
...It was a "gutsy decision" for Jiang to go to Harvard, says Kuhn...
...In 709 pages Kuhn never brings his two books together...
...This 1 HREE MEN OF PROGRESSIVELY diminishing clout and length of rule have led the 56year-old People's Republic of China (PRC...
...His career included study and industrial management training in the Soviet Union and Romania and six years directing the power plant of an auto works in Changchun in the developed Manchurian area of China...
...He gloss-es over Leninism (except for verbal gymnastics over which it is charitable to draw a veil) as if it were an awkward piece of Jiang's baggage...
...in anatomy/brain research, understands the absurdity of a "planned economy," but he whitewashes Jiang's failure to dismantle the hopeless state-owned factories...
...Deng Xiaoping, a boldly unMaoist authoritarian who saved Leninism by ignoring Marxism...
...If William Tucker is a writer living in Brooklyn...
...As the players disembarked from the bus, the camera panned around, catching sight of heroin addicts shooting up and drug dealers casually closing deals on park benches...
...Wait, what was happening...
...Key quotes are sourced with the meaningless phrase, "Author's communication, Beijing...
...Jiang stands out here for hard work...
...In a poignant moment after entering his seventies he said, "The thing I am rather envious of is that Clinton, Chirac, Blair, and Schroder are all of a younger age [than I...
...But the real dichotomy is between the Communist regime and any-one who values freedom...
...between Mao smashing the crockery and Jiang making China "a normal country...
...By the later 1980s, he was boss of Shanghai...
...Here was Lenin's theory of a revolutionary vanguard salted with the Confucian scholar-official's sense of entitlement...
...Jiang cultivated the U.S., avoided party splits, admonished Japan, handled the military adroitly, whipped up national pride, and allowed a freer economy...
...he had compared him-self only to Westerners...
...Kuhn's engaging personal stories about Jiang ultimately fall short...
...The good-natured engineer from Yangzhou," Kuhn calls him...
...In the babble, we are offered sentences like this: "Jiang puts Three Represents at the pinnacle of purpose...
...TV Ross 'rethril RET in London, Car.al , . www.spectator...
...In Kuhn's eyes, Jiang never ceased to be a choirboy...
...and an immunity to doubt or embarrassment as he climbed the stairs of success...
...a 56-year affectionate marriage...
...He loves Beethoven and Mozart, sent his son to study in Philadelphia, and can give a talk in English...
...M T'A'112RELL, :at L Stephen A10 Spitzer's tricks 201 r^ r. .r.r' William haWerOSS COnfro . Saddam and Iraq now 32 Plus: Cops and Roberts...
...In those days, open drug dealing and mini-riots in public parks were a normal part of life...
...Quotation marks and hyphens come to his aid: the bothersome ones become "`leftist-conservatives...
...It escapes Kuhn that "representation" in some mystical way beyond being chosen in an election is a fraud...
...the PRC's side against Taiwan...
...The Man Who Changed China is really two books...
...So smitten with Jiang in power is Kuhn that he sees the Deng era as a mere "time of transition" So smitten with Jiang in power is Kuhn that he sees the Deng era as a mere "time of transition" between Mao smashing the crockery and Jiang making China "a normal country...
...No story or quote is omitted that may add to Jiang's Boy Scout image of utter honesty, universal respect from the 1.3 billion Chinese people, thirst for knowledge, and love of China...
...Interestingly, this saccharine biography comes not from a leftist but a scientist-businessman...
...On orientation night they showed parents a TV news clip of how the team had to travel each day to an East River park for practice...
...The strains of post-Mao reform and the Tiananmen Square crisis of 1989 having felled Deng's two logical successors, Jiang suddenly found himself Communist Party boss in June 1989, in Deng's shadow for the first half of the 1990s, supreme leader by the end of the decade...
...Interesting items appear, but without integration, like a magpie's array of twigs and bits of colored glass...
...Read this book for gems here and there but not for themes and answers...
...This news clip had been made about ten years ago, before Rudy Giuliani became mayor of New York...
...That China was not a democracy in the Western sense was clear, but neither was it a dictatorship...
...Kuhn's account of Jiang's speech at Harvard in 1997, which I attended, does not inspire confidence in his account of more elusive incidents behind the Beijing government's vermilion walls...
...lack of naked ambition...
...Back in the 1960s a roommate recalled Jiang coming home late after heavy toil at work: "He always opened the door gently...
...Was this the New York we knew...
...Gingrich lectured Jiang in the same unendearing, oppressive tone that had come to irritate many of his colleagues...
...Growing uncomfortable with his juggling act between leftist and conservative, he refers to leftists as "old-time idealists...
...better to denigrate them as conservative...
...When one of south China's most notorious corrupt officials was promoted to boss of Beijing, Kuhn is con-tent to observe: "Jiang helped his beleaguered friend...
...Leftists are called "conservatives," except when Kuhn, required to give some content to the label, backs off to say they are "hard-liners...
...Vast personal differences mark off Jiang Zemin from Leonid Brezhnev, but these shrink before the shared structural traps unwittingly laid bare in Kuhn's volume...
...Prince of the City is Fred Siegel's finely detailed, nearly reverent account of how one man—and one man alone—turned around The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life by Fred Siegel (ENCOUNTER BOOKS, 320 PAGES, $26.95) Reviewed by William Tucker SEPTEMBER 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 71...
...Kuhn, an investment banker with a Ph.D...
...Seldom has a biographer assembled so much to offer such a blur...
...He never turned on the light...
...J N KUHN'S BOOK TWO, chapter titles bang at one's ears like falling rafters: "My Life Was Closely Associated With Almost Three-Quarters of the Last Century," "The Outside World Has a Terrible Misunderstanding of China," "I Hope That Comrades Will Be United as One," "The Knowledge in Our World Is Rich and Vast, and the Mysteries of the Universe Are Infinite...
...I think a little better of Jiang as a person from reading what I call Kuhn's book one...
...Not so, given that Harvard agreed to most of Jiang's anti-free speech conditions for the appearance...
...AMUSING ARE KUHN'S VERBAL TRICKS over left and right...
...respect for teachers...
...And that Deng's death in 1997 was followed not by a coup d'etat, as was Mao's in 1976, but by an uninterrupted ebb of power into Jiang's pale, gesticulating hands...
...Jiang's wife was given easy jobs above competitors as Jiang rose, but we simply behold her angelic performance...
...Jiang's side against the Chinese students of 1989: paternalism's side over whisperings of democracy...
...Repeatedly Kuhn says "Westerners" may think one way on democracy but "Chinese" think another...
...You certainly can't call mistaken folk leftist...
...Internal evidence suggests the director general of the government Information Office has funneled material to the author...
...That Jiang's police blocked the New York Times website "was a source of discomfort" to Jiang, writes Kuhn...
...With the Three Represents, Jiang was simply telling the Communist Party to think of itself as hyper-advanced...
...and Jiang's side against Newt Gingrich when they met in 1997...
...Reviewed by Ross Terrill Reading Robert Lawrence Kuhn's book about Jiang is like exploring Ross Terrill, associate in research at Harvard's Fairbank Center, has written three biographies, Mao, R.H...
...In the narrative of book two, Jiang Zemin is the third giant of the PRC, a full match for Mao and Deng...
...He writes: "To most Westerners, Communism is a colossal failure...
...Worse, it is fawning, naive about Communism, and shaky on PRC and earlier Chinese history...
...Kuhn's second book, interwoven with the first, is a mechanical account of Jiang Zemin as top leader of party, state, and military, based on his speeches and what admiring aides and friends told Kuhn...
...Tawney and His Times, and Madame Mao...
...Compared with Mao and even Deng, Jiang is almost a man of the West...
Vol. 38 • September 2005 • No. 7
