Results for “china book” 662 found
China Fact of the Day
One of my students, Helen Yang, writes from China:
I encountered Tyler's book at a small bookstore. They were pirated English copies. Guess how much? 2 dollars per kilogram! I bought one and paid 1 dollar because it weighed 0.5 kilo.
I wonder if this is what Tyler meant by Create Your Own Economy?
TNR has a new web site on new books.
1. TNR has a new web site on new books. Here is Eric Posner reviewing a new book on Justice Anthony Kennedy.
2. Nick Rowe on monopolistic competition and macroeconomics and recalculation.
3. A new criticism of Comparative Effectiveness Research.
4. Reihan Salam reviews Cohen and DeLong.
5. Paris at night.
China kiln fact of the day
At around the time of the Industrial Revolution:
Pottery, for instance, was manufactured in both England and China. The
design of the kilns differed greatly, however. English kilns were cheap
to build but very fuel inefficient; much of the energy from the burning
fuel was lost through the vent hole on the top (Figure 4). The typical
Chinese kiln, on the other hand, was more expensive to construct and,
indeed, required more labour to operate. Figure 5 shows how heat was
drawn into the chamber on the left and then forced out a hole at floor
level into a second chamber. The process continued through many
chambers until the air, by then denuded of most of its heat, finally
exited up a chimney. In England, it was not worth spending a lot of
money to build a thermally efficient kiln since energy was so cheap. In
China, however, where energy was expensive, it was cost effective to
build thermally efficient kilns. The technologies that were used
reflected the relative prices of capital, labour, and energy. Since it
was costly to invent technology, invention also responded to the same
incentives.
Check out the accompanying sketch, from a short essay by Robert C. Allen, drawn from his new book The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. The bottom line seems to be this:
Success in international trade created Britain’s high wage, cheap
energy economy, and it was the spring board for the Industrial
Revolution.
Here is what WolframAlpha gives you for "Industrial Revolution."
Book splat
Reflection of a Political Economist, Selected Articles, by William A. Niskanen; the nature of this book is self-evident. globalization: n. the irrational fear that someone in China will take your job, by Bruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn; a good introductory look. Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life, by John Adams; excellent for Adams fans, it helps make sense of the music. Jan Zalasiewicz, The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks? Not much. A very good, fun introduction to some issues of geology. Casanova: Actor * Lover * Priest * Spy, by Ian Kelly. An underrated figure, an underrated book. The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist’s Guide to Success in Business and Life; a good introduction to game theory. The Princeton Companion to Mathematics; a very heavy book, in more ways than one.
China wailing market of the day, a continuing series
I entered the mourning profession at the age of twelve. My teacher forced me to practice the basic suona tunes, as well as to learn how to wail and chant. Having a solid foundation in the basics enables a performer to improvise with ease, and to produce an earth-shattering effect. Our wailing sounds more authentic than that of the children or relatives of the deceased.
Most people who have lost their family members burst into tears and begin wailing upon seeing the body of the deceased. But their wailing doesn’t last. Soon they are overcome with grief. When grief reaches into their hearts, they either suffer from shock or pass out. But for us, once we get into the mood, we control our emotions and improvise with great ease. We can wail as long as is requested. If it’s a grand funeral and the money is good, we do lots of improvisation to please the host.
"How long can you wail? What was your record?"
Two days and two nights…Voices are our capital and we know how to protect them…
…Frankly speaking, the hired mourners are the ones who can stick to the very end.
That is from Liao Yiwu’s excellent The Corpse Walker: Real-Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up. Here is a previous installment in the series. Here is an out of date book, by comedian Eddie Cantor. Here is a photo:
The Man Who Loved China
That’s the new Simon Winchester book and it concerns Joseph Needham, who wrote the famous series on the history of science in China and focused the attention of the scholarly world on the question: why no capitalism in China? This books offers a love story, a story of a quest, a story of science, a tale of politics, and did you know that Needham (unwittingly) was the guy who taught the Unabomber to use explosives?
Here is one short bit from the book:
In 1989, more than half a century after they first met, Needham and Lu Gwei-djen were married in Cambridge. She died two years later, whereupon Needham invited three other women to marry him. All politely declined.
Definitely recommended. The subtitle is "The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom." Here is one review.
China fact of the day
There are some forty thousand Chinese restaurants in the United States — more than the number of McDonald’s, Burger Kings, and KFCs combined.
That is from the often quite interesting The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, by Jennifer 8. Lee (yes, readers, her middle initial is the number "8"). Of course arguably most of these restaurants do not count as Chinese food at all.
At the end of the book the author undertakes a global pilgrimage to discover the very best Chinese restaurant outside of China. The winner?: Zen Fine Chinese Cuisine, just outside of Vancouver. The number two choice came — justly — in Mumbai (Nelson Wang’s China Garden). I’ve never been to Richmond but I believe all of my top picks would come in India. Hunan, in London, deserves consideration as well. The author is correct that Chinese chefs, for whatever reason, do not flourish in France. Recommended.
Why no Industrial Revolution in China?
John Darwin gives it a shot:
The best answer we have is that it [Kiangnan and China] could not surmount the classic constraints of pre-industrial growth. By the late eighteenth century it faced steeply rising costs for food, fuel and raw materials. Increasing population and expanding output competed for the produce of a more or less fixed land area. The demand for food throttled the increase in raw cotton production. Raw cotton prices probably doubled in the Yangtze delta between 1750 and 1800. The demand for fuel (in the form of wood) brought deforestation and a degraded environment. The escape route from this trap existed in theory. Kiangman should have drawn its supplies from further away. It should have cut the costs of production by mechanization, enlarging its market and thus its source of supply. It should have turned to coal to meet the need for fuel. In practice there was little chance for change along such lines. It faced competition from many inland centres where food and raw materials were cheaper, and which could also exploit China’s well-developed system of waterway transport. The very perfection of China’s commercial economy allowed new producers to enter the market with comparative ease at the same technological level. Under these conditions, mechanization — even if technologically practical — might have been stymied at birth. And, though China had coal, it was far from Kiangnan and could not be transported there cheaply. Thus, for China as a whole, both the incentive and the means to take the industrial "high road" were meagre or absent.
In other words, who really knows? The excerpt is from Darwin’s new book After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405, which should be read by anyone…who…reads books with titles like that. It is most interesting on the Indian and Arabic collapse of the 18th century and on fitting the Russian conquest of Central Asia into the more general history of European imperialism. I didn’t find any revelations in the book, but it was consistently interesting and readable throughout.
Books John Nye should read
Since the 1990s the policies of the three major players (Taiwan, China, and the United States) have become unstable in many ways. The possibility of a miscalculation by any participant with respect to the two others is quite high. China thinks that Washington will not sacrifice Los Angeles for Taiwan, the United States that Beijing will not sacrifice twenty or thirty years of development for Taipei, and Taiwan that it can confront Beijing with a fait accompli and not suffer the consequences. Those are three dangerous mistakes.
That is from Therese Delpech’s fascinating Savage Century: Back to Barbarism. This book made a splash in France but has been virtually ignored in the U.S. There haven’t been many reviews but here are some endorsements.
Two of the book’s major themes are a) don’t be fooled, the barbarisms of World War II and 20th century totalitarianism are not really behind us, and b) don’t expect Asia to be stable in the 21st century. Highly recommended and yes it did remind me of John Nye.
Speaking of John, here is a Reason dialogue with John, covering his new book and also his description of GMU lunches.
China and Industrial Policy
Brad DeLong’s post on China and industrial policy combines a deep knowledge of history, politics and economics. It’s a superb post, one of Brad’s best ever so do read the whole thing then come back here for some minor quibbles.
Brad goes over the top for Deng Xiaoping ("quite possibly the greatest human hero of the twentieth century.") Without denying Deng’s importance, I would say that China’s great leap forward came with the death of Mao Zedong. Once Mao – quite possibly the greatest human killer of the twentieth century – was dead, China could almost not help but improve.
Second, the Chinese people, especially the peasant farmers, deserve a huge amount of credit. Here’s a couple of paragraphs I wrote recently:
The Great Leap Forward was a great leap backward – agricultural land was less productive in 1978 than it had been in 1949 when the communists took over. In 1978, however, farmers in the village of Xiaogang held a secret meeting. The farmers agreed to divide the communal land and assign it to individuals – each farmer had to produce a quota for the government but anything he or she produced in excess of the quota they would keep. The agreement violated government policy and as a result the farmers also pledged that if any of them were to be jailed the others would raise their children.
The change from collective property rights to something closer to private property rights had an immediate effect, investment, work effort and productivity increased. “You can’t be lazy when you work for your family and yourself,” said one of the farmers.
Word of the secret agreement leaked out and local bureaucrats cut off Xiaogang from fertilizer, seeds and pesticides. But amazingly, before Xiaogang could be stopped, farmers in other villages also began to abandon collective property.
Deng and others in the central leadership are to be credited with recognizing a good thing when they saw it but it was the farmers in villages like Xiaogang that began China’s second revolution.
Addendum: For the story of Xiaogang I draw on John McMillan’s very good book, Reinventing the Bazaar.
China fact of the day
If Wal-Mart were a country, it would be China’s eighth largest trading partner…
That is from Jeremy Haft’s cheesy-looking but at times interesting All the Tea in China: How to Buy, Sell, and Make Money on the Mainland.
China fact of the day
Top 10 collections of translated poetry, from a single Chinese store:
- Paul Celan, Selected Poetry and Prose
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems
- Dylan Thomas, Selected Poems
- Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Poems
- Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems
- Allen Ginsberg, Selected Poems
- Friedrich Hölderlin, Poems
- Constantine P. Cavafy, Collected Poems
- Federico Garcia Lorca, Selected Poetry
- The Eddas
Not a bad list, I would like to know more about their clientele. The top four "General Titles in Poetry" are:
- Friedrich Hölderlin, Collected Prose
- Martin Heidegger, Elucidations of Holderlin’s Poetry
- Wang Zuoliang, History of English Poetry
- Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation
Thanks to Yan Li for the pointer.
If you read only one book by Orhan Pamuk
The White Castle is short, fun, and Calvinoesque. Not his best book but an excellent introduction and guaranteed to please. Snow is deep, political, and captures the nuances of modern Turkey; it is my personal favorite. The New Life isn’t read often enough; ideally it requires not only a knowledge of Dante, but also a knowledge of how Dante appropriated Islamic theological writings for his own ends. My Name is Red is a complex detective story, beloved by many, often considered his best, but for me it is a little fluffy behind the machinations. The Black Book is the one to read last, once you know the others. Istanbul: Memories and the City is a non-fictional memoir and a knock-out.
China fact of the day
I remain disappointed by how our media underreport the news from China. Here is one possibly major development:
China will kick off reform of its publishing system by transforming the country’s publishing houses from public service institutions into business-oriented enterprises, an official from the Regulations Bureau of China’s Press and Publication Administration (CPPA), who wished to remain anonymous, told Interfax in an interview.
All publishing houses in China, except for the People’s Publishing House, will undergo this reform. The People’s Publishing House, meanwhile, will remain a public service institution. China currently has approximately 527 publishing houses, of which 20 to 30 are private enterprises. Most of these private publishers are engaged in publishing books.
“An experimental batch of publishing houses has been selected and their reshuffling and reform will be finished by the end of 2004,” the CPPA official explained. “Related information will not be publicized before the publishing system reforms are completed.”
Here is yet some further good news:
According to China’s WTO obligations, the retail book market will be open to foreign investment without any restriction after December 1, 2004. Foreign investors will have the final say in investment proportion, business fields and sales locations. Private investment will also be encouraged.
Here is the full (albeit brief) story. No, I don’t expect Chinese censorship to go away, but many restrictions are easing:
In 2003, the Party ordered reform for the whole cultural system. Some magazines and newspapers were no longer offered government and Party support to aid in distribution and revenue earning. As a result, over 600 newspapers and magazines folded, with some 400 more still facing challenges.
Here is more on opening up the Chinese publishing market. Milton Friedman, of course, was right to point out the strong connection between economic and political freedom. Here is a previous installment of “China Fact of the Day.”
What I’ve been reading
1. Ben Cohen, The Hot Hand: The Mystery and Science of Streaks. An intelligent popular social science book covering everything from Stephen Curry to Shakespeare to The Princess Bride, David Booth, Eugene Fama, and more. I am not sure the book is actually about “the hot hand” as a unified phenomenon, as opposed to mere talent persistence, but still I will take intelligence over the alternative.
2. Richard J. Lazarus, The Rule of Five: Making Climate History at the Supreme Court. A genuinely interesting and well-presented history of how climate change became a partisan issue in the United States, somewhat broader than its title may indicate.
3. Ryan H. Murphy, Markets Against Modernity: Ecological Irrationality, Public and Private. The book has blurbs from Bryan Caplan and Scott Sumner, and I think of it as an ecological, historically reconstructed account of the demand for irrationality as it relates to the environment, interest in “do-it-yourself,” and the love for small scale enterprise. Interesting, but overpriced.
4. Juan Du, The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City. An actual history, as opposed to the usual blah-blah-blah you find in so many China books. The author has a background in architecture and urban planning, and stresses the import of the Pearl River Delta before Deng’s reforms (Shenzhen wasn’t just a run-down fishing village), decentralization in Chinese reforms, and fits and starts in the city’s post-reform history. Anyone who reads books on China should consider this one.
Gordon Teskey, Spenserian Moments, The Master is finally receiving his poetic due.
Toby Ord’s forthcoming The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity is a comprehensive look at existential risk, written by an Oxford philosopher and student of Derek Parfit.