Several newspapers and magazines have published reviews of James Mann’s new book, The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression. (Read also CDT’s interview with Mann about the book.) From the Washington Post:
The China Fantasy raises an awkward and important question: What if there is a third alternative between the rise of democracy and the collapse of China’s political order? What if that alternative is the survival of the one-party state, with all its apparatus of control and repression? In an era when capitalists can join the party built by Mao, the Chinese communists have already shown how adept they are at changing their spots. What would it mean for the United States — and, indeed, the world — if 20 or 30 years from now a much richer and more powerful China proved to be every bit as authoritarian a state as it is today? What if that China were one in which the middle classes decided, much as they did in Hitler’s Germany, to opt for stability and prosperity over democracy? [Full text]
– See additional reviews from Bloomberg and Asia Media. Mann also wrote a piece on this topic for this month’s American Prospect (by subscription only).
