by David Shambaugh
China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom by Richard Baum
China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
China’s New Rulers: The Secret Files by Andrew J. Nathan and Bruce Gilley New York Review Books, 280 pp.
This article was first published in the September 30, 2010 issue of
In the next few weeks, an event will take place in Beijing on a par with anything dreamed up by a conspiracy theorist. A group of roughly three hundred men and women will meet at an undisclosed time and location to set policies for a sixth of humanity. Most China watchers will eventually learn that the meeting is taking place and scramble to figure out what is going on, but all the outside world will receive is a terse acknowledgment that it took place and a few gnomic sentences on its outcome. In the weeks that follow, learned scholars will plumb this statement for its deeper meaning, subjecting it to textual analysis and proposing a series
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China holds low-key Nanking massacre memorial service as Beijing seeks to warm ties with Tokyo Sunday’s memorial service marked the 83rd anniversary of the Nanking massacre. Photo: AP
China on Sunday held a solemn but low profile memorial service to mark the 83rd anniversary of the Nanking massacre by Japanese troops during World War II, a bitter source of grievance between the Asian neighbours as Beijing and Tokyo seek to strengthen ties ahead of a new US administration.
Neither Chinese President Xi Jinping nor any of the other six members of the Communist Party s Politburo Standing Committee - it s top leaders - were present at the service in Nanjing, the eastern city s modern-day name.