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Super Buch über China, alle international tätige Personen können viel im Umgang und Behandlung über China uns deren Menschen, Arbeitsweise, Absichten usw lernen und besonders D. Trump sollte es lesen. Read more

This is a definitive book to understand China. Kissinger writes with souplesse and transmits a series of personal impressions through the contact with Chineses leaders that no one else had. The intermediation of Nixon with Mao opened doors that have been preserved over the years. The fact that he lived extended periods in China helped. For a portrait of Chu Enlai and Jiang Zemin this book is inescapable. Being a patriot Henry realizes that the confrontation postures towards China solve nothing. Being a realist, Kissinger belittles the obstinacy of the idealist left in general with human rights. There is no international politics that is built around and based on the human rights elegy. That make sense in a Western context but little in civilizations that don't yet have the minimum to give comfort and basic food to their populations. A must read. Read more

Book starts with arts of the war by sun king then brief history of ancient history on china then on European conquest of china and next detailed explanation on china civil war between communist soldiers led by mao and nationalist soldiers led by Chiang and last more focused on how china and the USA formed relationships in the second half of the twentieth century and fall of the twentieth century, book contains cultural revolution, great leap forward, tiannaman square crisis and Vietnam War ... those who interested in modern chinese history this book contains good content and go for it. Read more

The book covers a huge historical period. It is true, however, that the first of a total of eighteen chapters plus an epilogue covers a period of millenia. It commences with the unification of China in the 3rd century B.C. and ends in the 19th century, a period of humiliation for China with incursions, depredations, and its semicolonization by the Western powers. The aim of this first chapter is to familiarize the reader with China's Confucian culture, its approach to Diplomacy and its conception of the Art of War. The balance of the book covers the remaining period to the present year. This latter period includes the very period of its humiliation including the notorious opium war, the 22 year civil war which ended with communism prevailing in 1949;the Mao era and the turbulent sixties with the Great Leap Forward which left in its wake 20 million Chinese dead from famine, the Cultural Revolution which nearly ruined China and forced Mao to reverse it. But it also describes the unprecedented growth under Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese leaders that followed him rendering China an Economic Superpower. The credentials of the author for writing the book are impeccable:the book was written 40 years after the author's first high level mission to China at the behest of president Nixon in 1971 and following 50 additional travels and discussions with four generations of Chinese leaders in the interval. The book aims, partly drawing on the discussions with Chinese leaders as primary source, to explain the conceptual way the Chinese think about problems of peace and war and international order, and its relationship to the more pragmatic American way. American exceptionalism is missionary. It holds that the United States has an obligation to spread its values to every part of the world. China's exceptionalism is cultural. China does not proselytize;it does not claim that its contemporary institutions are relevant outside China. But it is heir to the Middle kingdom tradition, which formally graded all other states as various levels of tributaries based on their approximation to Chinese cultural and political forms;in other words, a kind of cultural universality. At the time when Buddhism appeared in Indian culture stressing contemplation and inner peace, and monotheism was proclaimed by the Jewish - and, later, Christian and Islamic - prophets with an evocation of a life after death, China produced no religious themes in the Western sense at all. The Chinese never created a myth of cosmic creation. Their universe was created by the Chinese themselves, whose values, even when declared of universal applicability, were conceived of as Chinese in origin. The predominant values of Chinese society were derived from the prescriptions of Confucius (551-479 B.C.). Confucius was concerned with the cultivation of social harmony. His themes were the principles of compassionate rule, the performance of correct rituals, and the inculcation of filial piety. The Confucius canon would evolve into something akin to China's Bible and constitution combined. Its maxim the harmonius society. Confucius preached a hierarchical social order. Oriented toward this world, his thinking affirmed a code of social conduct, not a roadmap to the after-life. At the pinnacle of the Chinese order stood the Emperor, a figure with no parallel in the Western experience. He combined the spiritual as well as the secular claims of the social order. The empire was administered by high literate bureaucracy selected following national examination. In Diplomacy rarely did the Chinese statesmen risk the outcome of a conflict on a single all-or-nothing clash;elaborate multiyear maneuvers were closer to their style. Where Western tradition prized the decisive clash of forces, the Chinese ideal sressed subtlety, indirection, and the patient accumulation of relative advantage. China's most enduring game is wei qi. Wei qi translates as 'game of surrounding pieces;it implies a concept of strategic encirclement. Chess on the other hand, is about total victory. The purpose of the game is checkmate, to put the opposing king into a position where he cannot move without being destroyed. A similar contrast exists in the case of China's distictive military theory. Chinese thinkers developed stragetic thought that placed a premium on victory through psychological advantage and preached the avoidance of direct conflict. The seminal figure in this tradition is known to history as Sun Tzu, author of the famed treatise 'The Art of War'. What distinguishes Sun Tzu from Western writers on strategy is the emphasis on the psychological and political elements over the purely military. Where Western strategists reflect on the means to assemble superior power at the decisive point, Sun Tzu addresses the means of building dominant political and psychological position, such that the outcome becomes a foregone conclusion. The author is incisive in describing the personalities of Chinese leaders including Mao's and Zhou's:'The difference between the leaders was reflected in their personalities. Mao dominated any gathering;Zhu suffused it. Mao's passion strove to overwhelm opposition;Zhou's intellect would seek to persuade or outmaneuver it. Mao was sardonic;Zhou penetrating. Mao thought himself as a philosopher;Zhou saw his role as an administrator or negotiator;Mao was eager to accelerate history;Zhou was content to exploit its currents. A saying he often repeated was 'The helmsman must ride the waves.' When they were together there was no question of the hierarchy, not only in the formal sense but in the deepest aspect of Zhou's extraordinary deferential conduct.' And then we come to Deng. Mao destroyed China and left its rubles as building blocks for ultimate modernization. Deng was the builder. The China of today - with the world's second-largest economy and largest volume of foreign exchange reserves, and with multiple cities boasting skyscrapers taller than the Empire State building - is testimonial to Deng's vision, tenacity, and common sense. Mao had governed as a traditional emperor of a majestic and awe-inspiring kind. He embodied the myth of the imperial ruler supplying the link between heaven and earth and closer to the divine than the terrestrial. Deng governed in the spirit of another Chinese tradition:basing omnipotence on the ubiquitousness but also the invisibility of the ruler. Mao had governed by counting on the endurance of the Chinese people to sustain the suffering his personal vision would impose on them. Deng governed by liberating the creativeness of the Chinese people to living above their own vision of the future. In the epilogue the author outlines possible scenarios in the relationship between USA and China: The conflict scenario: The United States is more focused on overwhelming military power, China on decisive psychological impact. Sooner or later, one side or the other would miscalculate. The above scenario is countered by China's demographics and the capability of modern military technology. Another scenario is that the crucial competition between the United States and China is more likely to be economic and social than military. The author concludes appropriately the book with a wish:that the United States and China could merge their efforts to build the world. Read more