On China

Not So Good

Dr Kissinger has become a victim of his own policies. His unstiniting apology for China was once helpful, in that he correctly presented China as a country with whom we could negotiate...even as he ignored the butchery and deprivation of rights. OK, Mr Kissinger, so we can negotiate with them. Thank you for that. The interest in China which you helped generate, however, has led most thinking Americans to a more nuanced view. China can be seen and all which can be seen is not praiseworthy. We perceive a China disabled by history and its incredibly dysfunctional language, using internet and media control to reimpose the very isolation you and Nixon went to China to abolish. Read the book if you want to gloss over Mainland China's horrors. Otherwise, skip it.

3 out of 14 people found this review helpful.

For those who wish to relate with China for mutual benefit

Dr Kissenger's tour de force, On China, serves well to those looking to relate with the awakening giant. Hopefully world leaders and businessmen take heed for mutual benefit, world peace and prosperity. It's a book well worth investing time in study and reflection. It shows the way forward!

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Excellent read

A review of history IN DETAIL. Excellent read.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Kissinger's Ignorance about China

China is a complicated large country with a long history and civilization entirely different from Western ones. Chinese leaders are usually profoundly shrewd and avoid being seen through by others. The top leading group is a black box. Its operation is tightly kept confidential. However, for an autocracy like China, one cannot understand it without understanding its leaders. No wonder China watchers are frustrated in understanding China.


However, as a well-experienced and informed diplomat and politician who helped Nixon achieve rapprochement with China, Kissinger must be in a better position to see through Chinese leaders, since he has met various Chinese leaders many times. I, therefore, read through his book On China, but am greatly disappointed that Kissinger gives distorted images of and misinformation about China and Chinese leaders, especially Chinese madman Mao.


Having personally experienced Mao's tyranny, my greatest worry concerning China is the potential emergence of another madman like Mao when China grows into a rival to America. The disaster that he may cause to Chinese and world people will be much more serious than Mao's great famine and Cultural Revolution.


Kissinger, however, compared China's rise now with that of Germany before World War I and believes if the state leaders then had known the consequence of the war, they would "have recoiled" from confrontation. So will China and America in the future, he concludes. Kissinger forgets World War II, which is much more relevant. Madmen Hitler and Tojo Hideki started the war because they were callous killers and their mad calculation made them believe they would win the war. Tojo was especially mad. He attacked America when compared with the giant of US economy, Japan's was a dwarf.


Due to limited space I will only list a few of Mao's evils:


Like Hitler, Mao Was a Callous Killer.


In a speech on August 10, 1959, Mao gave the reasons why there was no Hungarian Rebellion (referring to the Hungarian Revolution in 1956) in China, saying that since the communist takeover "more than one million counterrevolutionaries have been killed. Hungary has not killed any counterrevolutionary. For the elimination of more than one million of the 600-odd million people, I think we shall shout hurrah for that." The counterrevolutionaries referred to in his speech were mostly unarmed civilians put to death in peacetime. The terror lies in his pride and joy in the killing.

Mao's Fits of Madness:


1. Mao's mad campaign the Great Leap Forward giving rise to a death toll of 20 to 40 million people is now well-known the world over.


2. Mao's second fit of domestic madness the Cultural Revolution is even more notorious. There were no statistics of the death toll and the number of victims. People who personally experienced it like me know that the number was enormous.


3. Mao told Soviet leader Khrushchev that he would fight a nuclear war to eliminate capitalism all over the world even if half of Chinese population (300 million then) died in the war.

4. Mao brought the world to the verge of nuclear war twice by his two Taiwan crises.

As Maoism remains popular in China, there is possibility of the emergence of another madman like Mao when China grows into a superpower equal in strength to America. I hope people will not be mislead by Kissinger and thus fail to be on their alert.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Dtin

Let e cjec brb baby go to the fisrt for now an ill tell u where our house is

Hannah

Ok

I must confess that prior to reading On China, I knew little abo

I must confess that prior to reading On China, I knew little about the country other than popular culture stereotypes and a smattering of history. This has now changed and I feel more secure in my knowledge of China and the reasons they act illogically and irrational at times.

I do not believe that there is another country on the face of the earth where the totality of history must be so strongly considered when constructing diplomatic strategy. Kissinger provides this in-depth history and analysis that provides us a scaffold. In the past, too often we have stumbled around in the dark trying to keep one step ahead of their mindset. And too often, our Congress and leadership has presented simplistic and naïve solutions to the China problem without consideration of this deep history.

Throughout the book Kissinger expounds on the Chinese canon of strategic thought that includes subtlety, indirection and patience over sword rattling. The modern western world must understand these strategies to the nth degree or we will once again become vassal states of the “Middle Kingdom”. Kissinger has provided this well written book as a guide and offers wise advice for the future. It greatly concerns me that we will not take it.

I hope you find this review / opinion helpful.

Michael L. Gooch, Author of Wingtips with Spurs.

Highly recommend for any business working in and with China

found this perspective of the history of China's growth as a super power competitor and (often) partner with the US very useful. This is not what you will read in the main stream media, and newly minted history books designed to "change our history." Not so when history participants candidly share their experiences.

Most Excellent

You simply must read this book.

Kissinger knows China first hand.

There are so many books not to read, this is not one of those.

Other books on China you must read include those written by YALE's Sterling Historian Jonathan Spence's highly acclaimed definitive book:

In Search of Modern China

Here is a webpage with excerpts from both:
http : // goo . gl / eSIF
please remove spaces from link

A sweeping, authoritative, insightful history of China from Henry Kissinger

In his formidable 500-page-plus book, equally formidable scholar-diplomat Henry Kissinger writes about the nation with which he is inextricably linked: China. Kissinger infuses his text with impressive personal recollections based on more than 50 visits to China over 40 years, working either officially as national security adviser and secretary of state, or unofficially as a foreign policy expert. In that time, he has seen China's evolution through four generations of its leaders. His insights on foreign policy and his personal rapport with top officials enable him to embellish this diplomatic history with extraordinary detail and discernment. getAbstract highly recommends the book's vast scope to anyone seriously interested in examining China's current and future role in world politics and economics, and that should be just about everyone.

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