Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century by Orville Schell and John DeLury (review)

Modern Chinese history has been a veritable roller coaster of events as far as the Chinese people are concerned. China went from being a smug and isolated empire to a semi colony, and then a chaotic republic and finally a Marxist state that shifted later to capitalism. The changes China experienced were dizzying to those who lived through it. Orville Schell and John DeLury chronicle modern Chinese history through the lives of leaders who shaped events and Chinese thinking . What we have here are a series of historical vignettes accompanied by revealing photographs.

Schell and DeLury offer some surprises. Internal Self-Strengthener Tseng Kuo-Fan comes across as an innovator. Sun Yat-Sen is seen as rather awkward and ineffective. Chiang Kai-Shek appears in a far better light than most people are used to seeing and is presented as a sincere and dedicated nationalist. Mao Zedong is treated carefully while his blunders and obsession with control are dully noted. Ultimately, Mao’s obsessions nearly destroyed the People’s Republic he founded. The authors believe Mao razed traditional Chinese society to the ground and made Deng Xiaoping’s later reforms possible. They state the Chinese people were grateful to Deng that he was not Mao. Perhaps a half century from now, Deng will be seen as a bigger reformer than Mao Zedong ever was.

When the authors get to more recent figures such as Zhu Rongji and Liu Xiaobo, their wishful thinking becomes evident. Clearly Schell and DeLury hope China will evolve along the lines of a Western style democracy. Whether that will actually happen is uncertain. Chinese history has its own distinct patterns which are unlike those of other countries. For example, some scholars wonder if the dynastic cycle is still operative and whether the People’s Republic is a different type of dynasty. Mao was the founding ruler and Deng the reformer-consolidator. Leaders from Jiang Zemin to Xi Jinping are lesser mortals. On the other hand, China has had periods of unity and strength followed by interludes of disunity and chaos. The century of humiliation which undermined the Qing Dynasty was a bit unusual, but it is abundantly clear China is determined never to forget that or allow it to happen again.

Imperial China had a smug sense of cultural superiority and modern China has nationalism that can become rather shrill. The Chinese will never see their history as the West sees it. We need to understand China through Chinese eyes while at the same time understanding what they overlook or ignore. Readers interested in Chinese history will do well to read Wealth and Power as an introduction to the world’s most populous country.