49 Myths About China Hardcover

Marte Kjar Galtung

This engaging book highlights 49 prevalent myths about China's past, present, and future and weighs their truth or fiction. Leading a thoughtful and entertaining tour, the authors debunk widespread "knowledge" about Chinese culture, society, politics, and economy. Their timely work offers an illuminating window on a rising power we often misunderstand.

1442236221

9781442236226

English

Rowman And Littlefield

13/Nov/14

266

Marte Kjaer Galtung is a China analyst at the Norwegian Defence Staff. She has previously worked on China with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; as a cultural attache at the Norwegian embassy in Beijing, and subsequently on the Norwegian government's China strategy. She is the author of China: People, History, Politics, and Culture. Stig Stenslie is head of the Asia Branch of the Norwegian Defence Staff. He has been visiting scholar at, among others, the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, National University in Singapore, and Columbia University in New York. He is the author of several books on contemporary China and the Middle East, most recently Regime Stability in Saudi Arabia: The Challenge of Succession and Stability and Change in the Modern Middle East.

From the foreword: Galtung and Stenslie offer a spirited, enjoyable way to improve our insight. It will be a rare reader who doesn't believe, perhaps unconsciously, in quite a few of the myths skewered in this book. Test yourself by looking at the table of contents and asking how you would disprove these propositions before you go on to read what the authors say. Then see how Galtung and Stenslie correct your mistakes. But don't worry. They will not make you feel stupid, because they offer not opposing myths but nuanced truths. Their deft approach will be fun for beginners and informative for experts. At the end of reading their forty-ninth essay, one will stand disabused of a bonus, fiftieth myth: the dangerous idea that outsiders cannot understand China. -- Andrew J. Nathan, Columbia University