Empire of Lies: The Truth About China in the Twenty-First Century | 
 enlarge | Author: Guy Sorman
Publisher: Encounter Books
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $9.52
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 56844
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 325
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 1594032165
Dewey Decimal Number: 951.06
EAN: 9781594032165
ASIN: 1594032165
Publication Date: April 25, 2008
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Condition: Ships immediately! Perfect and New! 2008 Hardcover.
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Product Description
Before the totalitarian reign of Mao Zedong and his immediate successors, never in human history had an entire nation been under such intense surveillance. The Chinese not only had to speak alike; they had to think alike. Traveling to China regularly since 1967, and spending all of 2005 and 2006 there, Guy Sorman saw it all, and in this jaw-dropping book, he documents the horrifying stories of China through the 21st century. He shows how the Party's primary concern is not improving the lives of the downtrodden; it seeks power more than it seeks social development. It expends extraordinary energy in suppressing Chinese freedoms-the media operate under suffocating censorship, and political opposition can result in expulsion or prison-even as it tries to seduce the West, which has conferred greater legitimacy on it than do the Chinese themselves.
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The mask ripped off, the Potemkin Village blown up June 5, 2008
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
Economic conservatives and neoliberal "spinners" from James Fallows and Reed Hundt through Bill Clinton (singled out in one passage) are exposed as frauds, liars and enablers for a China of modern myth in this power-packed new book.
French journalist, politician and philosopher (and why can't we get that combo in America), exposes the lies of both the Chinese Communist Party and its Western apologists, which range from hardcore economic conservative American capitalists to French communists.
There's a few basic lies that underscore the scores of surface lies both the Chinese Party and its western enablers tell.
Sorman says Lie No. 1 is that capitalism will lead to democracy. He has a clear, albeit much smaller, counterexample - Singapore, led by, ironically or not, Chinese.
Lie No. 2 is that there is a "Chinese mindset," "Chinese way of business," or whatever, that is antithetical to democracy. Variants of that include references (usually wrong ones, according to Sorman) to Confucianism, etc. Counterexample? Taiwan. Daoism, repressed in China, flourishes there along with Confucianism, Buddhism and Protestant and Catholic Christianity -- along with traditional Chinese culture.
Lie No. 3 is the lie of Chinese economic statistics. Sorman says that even if you don't discount the costs of environmental degradation, Chinese growth rates are almost surely somewhat overstated, and possibly highly overstated.
Lie No. 4 might be a partial variant of No. 2, and would be the "China isn't all that bad" lie, especially if you compare it to the former Soviet Union. Sorman argues the other way around, that China is arguably more repressive than the Soviets of Khrushchev and beyond, at least in some ways.
As a result of all this, Sorman says, we really don't have that much to fear from China as a foreign power in general or a military adventurer in particular. On the economic side, in fact, he expects the rich-poor gap to be likely to worsen, not improve.
Another "sublie" would be the one that Western countries, through "economic involvement" with China, can moderate its behavior. China isn't going to be moderated by that. And, as a sidebar, Sorman estimates that about half the Western-owned factories in China are money-losers.
Read this book and get an unvarnished view of today's China.
Fantastic analysis Chinese govt abuse April 23, 2008
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
Most TIMELY profound analysis of the Chinese govt, and what can lead China to become a truly great nation. Confirms for me that China's brand of Communism will likely devolve like USSR.
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