On the Huffington Post, Jeffrey Wasserstrom of China Beat offers his advice to President Obama:
No, there hasn’t been any indication that the new President will be heading to China anytime soon, though it does seem likely that Hilary Clinton will make it there during her first trip abroad as Secretary of State. And I do realize that the new President’s got plenty to keep him busy on the home front. Still, it isn’t too soon for him to do some prep work designed to help him make sense of, craft policy toward, and eventually get the most out of a visit to China, a country that remains the world’s most populous and once boast (as it did for centuries prior to the 1850s) one of the world’s leading economies. In spite–and indeed partly because–of the severity of the financial meltdown and surging unemployment rates on our side of the Pacific, the big nation across that ocean should concern him. Arguably at least, the degree to which the economies of the U.S. and the PRC have become intertwined recently makes it even more important for him to familiarize himself with Chinese realities than it was for any of his immediate predecessors (and it was plenty important to them). With all this in mind, this post is one opinionated China specialist’s list of 5 books he should read, paired with 5 films and videos on complementary themes he should see.
