CHINA'S NEW ORDER By WANG HUI
This hardback with dustjacket is in very good used condition, with some creasing on dustjacket and minor wear.
"The essential arguments are comprehensible and stimulating for Chinese intellectuals as well as for those Westerners who insist that post-Mao China is roaring down the right track, that money pushes aside the old political stupidities, and economic progress leads eventually to democracy. These are the assumptions Wang seeks to rebut and his rebuttal will be uncomfortable reading for those who see capitalism as a moral driving force as well as an enriching one.
This book offers a powerful analysis of China and the transformations it has experienced since 1989. Wang Hui offers an insiders knowledge of economics, politics, civilisation, and Western critical theory. A participant in the Tianamen Square movement, he is also the editor of the most important intellectual journal in contemporary China. Wang Hui argues that the features of China today are elements of the new global order as a whole in which considerations of economic growth and development have trumped every other concern, particularly those of democracy and social justice. The plea at the heart of the book is for economic and social justice and an indictment of the corruption caused by the explosion of 'market forces.'
Unlike most other contemporary critics of China's reforms, Mr. Wang does not limit himself to economics. He dissects the big picture, calling on reformers to include culture, values and democratic governance in their assessments of success and failure. Such a critique is long overdue...Mr. Wang has become one of the first indigenous voices to critique China's 'economic miracle' fully and publicly and to find it a deficient remedy for the failures of socialism.
Wang's problem comes when Westerners and Chinese alike misread reform as apologia for the past. Socialism may be lost, he reminds us, but its reason for being will remain unless China and the rest of the world can protect against the laissez-faire injustices inherent to global capital."
