I just finished reading Randall Peerenboom’s China Modernizes: Threat to the West or Model for the Rest?

Great book. I learned a lot. Not an easy read, and you will really need to focus as you read this book, but it’s worth the time and investment. This is one of the many books I have listed in your syllabus, some pro-China and others anti-China, that you can choose from to read and write one of your book reviews about China.

Randall Peerenboom is UCLA law professor. He is also the Director of China programs for the Oxford Foundation of Law, Justice and Society. With respect to his academic training he has a PhD in Philosophy (University of Hawaii), an MA in Religious Studies (University of Hawaii) and a JD from Columbia Law School. He is also a consultant to the Ford Foundation and the Asian Development Bank on legal reforms and the rule of law in China.

Rather than reinvent the wheel and write my own review of his book, the best thing I can do is to refer you to a guest appearance and book review by Australian Mark Anthony Jones over at Dan Harris’ China Law Blog. You can read Mark’s review of Peerenboom’s book by clicking HERE. Be sure to read the comments at Dan’s post and the fireworks it generated.

For me, the following quote on page173 of Peerenboom’s book nicely captures what this book tries to address:

[The US State Department] reports for China invariably start with a description of the nature of the political regime, as if that were the most significant determinant for rights in the country. [For example,] the 2004 report on China begins: ‘The People’s Republic of China … is an authoritarian state in which … the Chinese Communist Party … is the paramount source of power.’

Imagine if it began instead: ‘Human rights and other indicators of well-being across the board are highly correlated with wealth. China outperforms the average country in its lower-middle income category on every major indicator except civil and political rights (as is generally true for other East Asian countries).

The China Is Bad (CIB) camp will hate this book because it has data that they want to run from — see, e.g., the discussion thread on the China Law Blog post noted above. I expect a few cyberstalker CIB’s that circle waiting for their chance to go negative will jump in and comment here, and with the usual rant to save the rest of us from the mainland Chinese. Fine. Have at it. But said CIB’s, in advance please pause to consider the intellectual and logical possibility that when one gives a positive book review on a ‘pro-China’ book that does not mean said person has joined the Communist party or is a person who has fallen for China’s charm; it may be that it’s just a damn good book that cuts new ground, and if the CIB’s actually take the friggin’ time to read the book they will see that where appropriate and relevant, Peerenboom take’s China to task.

In summary, if you want to understand China and East Asia and their development at a deeper level, this book is a must read. This book will also help what you learn in your MBA economics classes, particularly your spring macroeconomics course, better come to life.