BOOK
REVIEW An over-traveled
road China Road by
Rob Gifford
Reviewed by Dinah
Gardner
Former US network National Public
Radio correspondent for Beijing Rob Gifford was
sitting on a bus trundling across China's western
Gansu province when he found out the woman sitting
across from him is an abortionist. Her job was to
uphold China's
one-child policy. She
performed operations, sometimes forced, on women
who were pregnant with their second child.
Sometimes, even into the third trimester.
Gifford was appalled and then kicked
himself for not jumping off the bus after she
disembarked to ask her to confirm a rumor he heard
about the drowning of aborted fetuses that were
still alive after termination.
He used
this encounter to illustrate his point, reinforced
at length throughout China Road, that
Beijing has no respect for human rights. But
herein lies the weakness in what is, in every
other way, a very vivid
and lively piece of reportage. Gifford frequently
lets moral outrage color his arguments. In his
exchange with the abortionist, for example, he
doesn't give the reader any context.
Without added nuances the woman on the bus
seems heinous and the Chinese government pure
evil. Yet China is cripplingly overpopulated and
the one child policy, it can be argued, shows
responsibility and far-sightedness. He also
doesn't explain that abortions are not the moral
minefield in China that they are in the West and
that the practice of forced abortions, while
alleged to happen in some areas, is officially
illegal.
China Road, is Gifford's
swansong to the People's Republic. After reporting
from Beijing for NPR for six years, his final act
before leaving the country was to make the trek
along Route 312 which stretches almost 5,000
kilometers from Shanghai in the east to the border
with Kazakhstan in the western region of Xinjiang.
Along the way, he covered a lot of ground,
and not that's not just in kilometers. He used
interviews with people he met on the way - a mad
medley of characters from the abortionist on the
bus to a jilted karaoke escort girl to an earnest
group of Amway salesmen he stumbles across in the
middle of the Gobi Desert - to paint a picture of
China's possible future.
"Is China heading
for greatness or implosion?" he asks. Is it
destined for 21st century superpowerdom or a
collapse, Soviet style? In the end, Gifford isn't
really sure. He gives arguments in support of both
but one precursor for Chinese success, is, he
argues, democracy. If Beijing doesn't move to a
multi-party democracy, it is doomed.
Although economic development has bought
about more choices and freedoms for people
compared with their lot under the tyranny of Mao -
the "Chinese bird cage has become an aviary" - the
consumer boom hasn't reached hundreds of millions
of poor rural folk, most farmers live on less than
US$40 a month, there is no health insurance, the
country is riddled with endemic corruption and
there is no independent legal system. Cracks are
appearing in the country's social fabric, he
argues, pointing to a government statistic that
there are now more than 200 incidents of rural
unrest a day.
But this is where Route 312
comes in. To Gifford, it symbolizes China's one
hope at achieving that superpowerdom. The road
represents mass migration – the biggest yet in
human history - and this movement of people is
giving the population choices. It is allowing poor
people to travel to the city to look for work, and
increasingly this is not just to the wealthier
eastern coast but to inland cities where the
government is pumping money into their
development.
Xinjiang's regional capital,
Urumqi, he says, now reminds him of Los Angeles.
In this way, wealth is trickling down, people are
gaining access to knowledge, and that is creating
a new middle class that may eventually lead to
pluralism in government, he hopes.
One of
the weak points in China Road is the
intrusion of Gifford's religious views. He argues
that modern Chinese are floating in a moral vacuum
because Mao eradicated religion. While you can
certainly argue there is much immorality in modern
China - from forced abortions to the headlong
pursuit of material gain at the expense of the
environment - it's presumptuous of Gifford to
connect that with the country's secularity. As if
being godless makes people immoral.
To
anyone who has lived some time in China, Gifford's
book is nothing revolutionary - the editors appear
to have pruned it for a reader with little
knowledge of the country. There is a lot of
background on the Opium Wars, for instance, which
is old territory for Asian pundits; Gifford
peppers his writing with pinyin Mandarin and
phonetic explanations of how to pronounce Chinese
names; and some of his encounters are nothing new
to anyone who regularly reads Sunday supplement
features on the country.
There is also,
perhaps also, a little too much Gifford in there.
By the end of the book you know he is a devout
Christian, has a pretty wife, is battling an
expanding waistline and likes the feel of moss and
drinking low-fat lattes. Yet his writing is lively
and engaging with some very skilful imagery - six
years penning radio packages has oiled his style
well. He also knits a complex situation into
perspective, albeit slightly skewed towards a
western-oriented and Christian viewpoint.
All in all China Road is a
palatable and engaging vehicle that brings modern
China to life. And the fact that Gifford does not
come to a conclusion about whether the nation will
sink or swim doesn't matter. In fact, considering
the number of other authors who have spun books on
their China predictions makes Gifford's humility
on this count refreshing.
China Road: A
Journey into the Future of a Rising Power by Rob Gifford.
Random House (May 29, 2007) . ISBN-10: 1400064678.
Price US$26.95, 352 pages.
Dinah
Gardner is a freelance journalist based
in Beijing.
(Copyright 2007 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
way, a very vivid
and lively piece of reportage. Gifford frequently
lets moral outrage color his arguments. In his
exchange with the abortionist, for example, he
doesn't give the reader any context.
