China: The Balance Sheet--Book Review

If you’ve ever wondered where someone got their numbers about China then this book is for you. It’s just what it claims to be—a stat sheet of both good and bad that is Modern China. The book is divided into broad topics such as Domestic Economy, Chin in the World Economy, Foreign and Security Policy, and Domestic Transformation. The detail and bibliography are some of the most researched that I’ve see in my readings on China—a great resource for making broad political decisions or updating your research with current numbers.As with all numbers, there is an agenda. The point of all these statistics is to improve US-Chinese relations based on more information and consequently more dialogs. The book was written for The Institute for International Economics, a part of The Center for Strategic ad International Studies. Their self proclaimed agenda/priority is: “China, globalization and the backlash against it, outsourcing, reform of the international financial architecture, and new trade negotiations at the multilateral, regional, and bilateral levels.” They also bill themselves as “the most influential think tank on the planet.”One of the major conclusions is that “the interests of the United States and it’s global partners would be best service by policies that seek to engage rather than isolate the country, in order to moderate the potential devastating economic and security outcomes” of the continued rise of China. While this sounds nice, not everyone agrees. For a newly released view on why to not engage China you could read James Mann’s “The China Fantasy,” or the older but very good “The Coming Collapse of China” by Gordon Chang(review coming soon).All in all a quick but detailed read, a great library resource, and definitely worth the time and money.