Book Review: "The Writing On the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century" by Will Hutton (2007)

China, best described as "perplexing", is seen through the eyes of British journalist Will Hutton as neither a communist or a capitalist country but an authoritarian one where the ruling party dominates every sphere of activity. For Hutton, the potential for future Chinese economic growth is limited of a refusal to accept what he refers to as the values of the Enlightenment - the rule of law, an independent judiciary, a free press, and representative government. He says that these are not just Western values but are the values that underpin any society that successfully navigates through the tumult of the international financial system.

The price of the collectivization of agriculture under Mao - 37 million dead - and the accompanying Cultural Revolution, whereby up to half a million where slain due to insufficient loyalty to Marxism, is revealed along with the reformism of Deng Xiaoping, Tiananmen and Jiang Zemin, all of which lead us to today's China, which is a considerable player but a paper tiger under the surface. Hutton offers anecdotes to illustrate this, like the fact that the practice of bulldozing homes belonging to families who didn't adhere to the "one child" rule was only recently discontinued. This is a metaphor for China's limitations on a larger scale: the country does not allow for basic citizen participation within society. He argues that a pluralist market economy depends on the type of pluralist political institutions which Beijing consciously undermines. This has to change, or else in China's case, it will continue to be just one link of a vast global supply chain rather than an innovator in its own right, with those with Party connections at the top of the pyramid, those on the coast in the middle, and the vast majority of Chinese who live in the interior condemned to a life of poverty and hopelessness - a recipe for certain upheaval.

This is top-notch social science, even if the civil libertarian New Dealer Hutton does descend into a two-chapter long Krugmanesque pout towards the end of the book as he discusses what he considers to be the erosion of these Enlightenment values (which apparently includes not only a vigorous and emboldened trade unionism but also allowing convicted felons to vote) in America as of late. However, at the end of the day, he's an enthusiastic globalizer who takes an even-handed look at China and concludes that it is in the first world's interest to co-operate and help China reconcile its internal contradictions for the sake of international stability and prosperity.

Overall rating: 8/10