China has traditionally been a nation shaped by its past. In some regions of this gigantic country, the routine has not changed for generations. But as Julian Gewirtz, a 2013 graduate of Harvard College and a Rhodes Scholar, points out, Deng Xiaoping and other reformists concerned about the future have yanked the oldest centralized state in the world and pulled it forward.
China has long intrigued, baffled, and even threatened Westerners. The Chinese have an expression about the typical tourist's view of their country: it is like "gazing at flowers from horseback." Gewirtz's accessible and compact book enables us to see China's changes over the past 40 years in crystal clear detail.
In 1980, Deng Xiaoping told Robert McNamara, president of the World Bank, "We have lost touch with the world." Despite the roadblocks and hindrances to making economic changes and bringing prosperity to China, reformers travelled the globe visiting the United States, Hungary, Great Britain, West Germany, Brazil, and elsewhere looking for keys to the nation's economic transformation.
Today, a socialist market system is dominant in the world's second-largest economy. China remains the oldest enduring civilization on earth and now that they have tasted success, they must decide what choices they will make in their love/hate relationship with the West.
