My main takeaway from this book is that anyone who tries to generalize about China doesn't know what they're talking about, and indeed can't know what they're talking about. I feel comfortable making that generalization about generalizers because China is just so big, so complex, and changing so fast that attempts to summarize what's happening there not only inevitably obscure the facts, but are also out-of-date nearly as soon as they're printed. Superlatives evaporate as soon as they leap off the tongue. Fallows knows all this, which is why his modestly titled "postcards" (which are mostly articles first published in The Atlantic) emphasize detail and nuance more than anything else. I've considered Fallows one of my favorite journalists for a long time, based not only on his avuncular tone and thoughtful analysis, but also his attention to detail and ability to find context and larger trends without falling into the overgeneralizing trap I complained about before.

As China becomes more integrated into the world economy, its quirks - its intolerance of dissent and criticism, its rocky relationships with its neighbors, its struggle with environmental issues, and its almost unbelievably rapid yet uneven growth - will become more relevant than simple domestic election-year attack lines, but in order to figure out what to do about China (if indeed there is anything to be "done" about it), you have to figure out what's actually going on there. Fallows reports on a number of people or incidents that he believes to be fairly representative of the new China: entrepreneur-tycoons in Changsha, factories in Shenzen, reality TV shows in Beijing, gambling in Macau, censorship on the Internet, and above all the sense of dynamism and change all over the place in what is still in some ways a very rigid country. For the majority of recorded history China has been one of the largest economies in the world, and its recent history of poverty and playing catch-up is actually fairly unusual. The Chinese government has, after decades of purges and repressions, famines and revolutions, decided to do what it can to facilitate China's return to global promise and the results, as chronicled here, find parallel only in the wildest days of the American experience.

Last year I read a number of books about the 19th century United States, and I frequently found myself mentally comparing some of the places and people in this book to the more familiar denizens of New York and Chicago, though of course on a much larger scale - Guangdong province alone has more factory workers than all of America. The fact that the Chinese people are going through their Bridge of Sighs and Hell's Kitchen phase in the age of YouTube and netbooks is extremely interesting to me, and when I was done with this book I gained a valuable new perspective on all of the articles about currency manipulation and newly-minted billionaires cluttering up my inbox every day. Just imagine, Jurgis Rudkus and Horatio Alger and Tom Joad and hundreds of millions of others hustling by the shores of the Yangtze and the Huang He and the Pearl, building tomorrow with yesterday's tools... what will historians 50 years hence be writing about? I think Fallows gives a couple of good answers to that question. His wife, Deborah Fallows, has written a book about learning the Chinese language which is also on my to-read list, but the wide range of the country covered here has put a ton of other books on my radar. So much to read, so little time.... ( )

This book was a collection of essays about modern China that had been previously published in The Atlantic. I don't read The Atlantic so they were all new to me and very interesting. Just to give you an idea of the range of ideas discussed, I think my favorite essay was about the Chinese version of The Apprentice, where instead of competing for a job with Donald Trump (or a similar Chinese figure) the contestants are trying to get seed money to start their own company. The judges are real (and high profile) investors who are providing the prize money, and will have a real share in the winner's business. I was also interested in the section on the Great Firewall of China, especially after reading about it in [Who Controls The Internet?]. Unlike the authors of [Who Controls The Internet?], who insist that China is current proof that it is possible to regionally control the internet, Fallows explains that actually, getting around the Great Firewall is pretty easy and not even all that expensive. The trick of the Chinese government is to make getting through the firewall just troublesome enough that people won't bother with it. The essays were fascinating, and I recommend the book. ( )

Excellent series of essays from James Fallows. He originally published them in The Atlantic Monthly. He covers a wide range of topics about China - monetary ties with the U.S., cultural changes in the past 20 years, preparing for the Olympics, among others. Very interesting and informative. ( )