Official Review: China Alert: Beware the Waking Dragon

[Cody Mathews]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "China Alert: Beware the Waking Dragon" by Chiahou Zhang.]

“China Alert: Beware The Waking Dragon” by Chiahou Zhang is a non-fictional book which is for all readers, both serious China experts and the novice or beginner. It comes across as a textbook for all things China, specifically focusing on why they are now moving up in the world’s economy and what can be done to match their growth. The author does a good job with keeping the material in the book based off of evidence or other works by famous authors, but at times it felt like one huge Wikipedia entry.

The chapters vary in length and are based on a core theme that is discussed at the beginning of the chapter. For instance, there is a chapter on the history of China, and more importantly, what has happened over the last 50 years that changed them into the country we know today. The author did a good job with not going way back to B.C. times as I have read in other books on China. The political chapter was the second best chapter behind the social chapter. The chapter on the social aspects of China and how they have evolved today brought my knowledge of China to a new level. The chapters were not too long and were straight to the point, which helped me in reading the book in a relative short manner.

If I had to improve one thing, it would be in the substance of the sections in the chapters. At times, it felt like a Wikipedia entry instead of an author’s depiction of the data in written form. Overall, the information seemed accurate, but the way that it was presented was more of a textbook/checklist way of providing data instead of in narrative form.

If you want to read a quick book on the background and recent rise in economic, political and social change in China, than I would recommend this book. I give the book 3 out of 4 stars. I found the information on China important to see what the United States future options will be when dealing with them.

I did not give the book the 4 star rating because I felt it fell short on the way the information was presented. I would have liked more of a narrative format, in which the exact details of China were limited and the broader approach was taken. You could make an entire book, just on the facts about China, which is where this book seems to fit.

***
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[MyOwnStyle]

China indeed is a great nation with great people. i recently reading "Winner Take All: China's Race for Resources and What It Means for the World" by Dambisa Moyo, the book is about scarcity of resources, China, and the rest of the world.