Postcards from Tomorrow Square
James Fallows offers insightful reporting on the rise of China.
Veteran journalist James Fallows is at his best when explaining complicated international transactions in plain language. Fallows, who has been writing from China for The Atlantic magazine for the past two years, is not a China specialist.
But having studied economics at Oxford University, he appears to understand China鈥檚 economy and finances better than most of his journalistic peers. Postcards from Tomorrow Square, Fallows鈥檚 new book about the rise of modern China, is full of engaging examples.
To make a point about how the Chinese government imposes 鈥渁n unbelievably high savings rate鈥� on the Chinese people, Fallows follows a dollar as it travels to China from a customer in America buying a Chinese-made electric toothbrush.
The Chinese factory that made the toothbrush can鈥檛 use the dollars it earns. First it must take its dollars to a Chinese bank and change them into the local currency, the undervalued RMB.
Then, thanks to China鈥檚 currency controls, the dollars spent at an American drugstore end up in the Chinese equivalent of the Federal Reserve bank.
That bank then transfers the dollars on to Chinese foreign exchange administrators who move the great majority of China鈥檚 savings into 鈥渢he boring safety of U.S. Treasury 苍辞迟别蝉.鈥�
In effect, the Communist Party has approved a policy that takes money from poor factory workers and invests it in the United States, where it benefits not ordinary Chinese but US homeowners and lenders.
Having written extensively over the years on technological advances in different parts of the world, Fallows is also comfortable writing about the Internet.
In one excellent chapter, Fallows clearly describes how China鈥檚 control over the Internet has grown more sophisticated: The censors create an atmosphere of unpredictability based on ever-changing lines that can鈥檛 be crossed. This serves to encourage highly effective self-censorship.
But Fallows鈥檚 book mostly emphasizes聽 positive developments in China.
He describes the country鈥檚聽 new volunteerism, its success in manufacturing, and its attempts to cope with environmental pollution. He provides compelling portraits of several would-be Chinese entrepreneurs competing on a Chinese reality TV show modeled on Donald Trump鈥檚 鈥�The Apprentice.鈥�
He also profiles Chinese entrepreneurial heroes who aspire to do more than make money. One is a wealthy innovator who reveres Al Gore and promotes energy conservation. Two others, Taiwan-born business executives, have undertaken the seemingly impossible mission of reducing poverty in China鈥檚 remote western provinces.
Fallows accuses the 鈥淲estern press鈥� of generally conveying a 鈥渄im image鈥� of China. Unfortunately, he fails to give specific examples of where the Western media go wrong. (He also blames the Chinese government for doing a lousy public relations job.)
My own view is that China-based correspondents from the US and elsewhere deserve credit for covering tough subjects that Fallows barely touches on. These include pervasive government corruption, dangerous poisons in Chinese food and milk products, a brutal crackdown in Tibet, severe restrictions on Muslims in Xinjiang, and widespread repression of dissidents, petitioners, and unauthorized religious groups.
Seriously understating the case, Fallows acknowledges that the rule of law is 鈥渟till shaky鈥� in China.
He writes that the Chinese government at all levels is becoming 鈥渕ore accountable,鈥� but he neglects, for instance, to look into local-level gangsterization聽 鈥� the use of paid thugs by local officials and police to intimidate protesters and enforce land grabs.
To his credit, Fallows acknowledges his limits. No one, he argues, can provide the 鈥渙verall picture鈥� of China in a single book. It鈥檚 鈥渟imply too big and too contradictory.鈥�
Fallows bases his book on magazine articles on China that he wrote from 2006 up until quite recently. But 鈥淧ostcards from Tomorrow Square鈥� already has a slightly dated feel, because Fallows 鈥� understandably 鈥� was unable to incorporate the most recent news about the global recession that has struck China with great force.
The Chinese media call this a 鈥渇inancial tsunami鈥� and Fallows may need an entirely new book to deal with it.
Dan Southerland, executive editor of congressionally funded Radio Free Asia, is a former Monitor correspondent and a former Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post.