Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

Mr. Evan Osnos' writing is engaging and the narratives in this book provide a useful rainbow prism to understand China's past and present. Indeed, Mr. Osnos' writing is superb. While I highly recommend this book to any student of business, economics, geopolitics and other disciplines, I can give this fine book only a three star, since the book contains a hefty amount of Mr. Osnos' views -- in the forms of psychoanalysis and predictions -- about his subjects, most of whom are fascinating people in their own right.While there is nothing novel in this book about China, Mr. Osnos' narratives provoke reflection about which form of governance is most suitable for not only China, but also the US, nations in the Middle East, and the rest of the world.The deeply polarized and nearly paralyzed Washington DC Establishment, with its insanely lucrative revolving doors, really does not inspire any rational Chinese leader to imitate the US system. The tragic events and tensions in Ferguson, MO make one rethink about the way of life in the US and whether Chinese citizens would be better off if China were to adopt the US model of "democracy."As the cliche goes: no one suit fits everyone. Flip through the pages of today's The New Yorker, The New York Times and other news publications by companies that embody "freedom of press and speech" and one gets a sense of how the same events are reported differently with different biases, including the devastating turmoils in Israel and Palestinian territories, the horrific atrocities being perpetrated by ISIS (or IS), Egypt's so-called Arab Spring yielding a new president who was an army general, protracted street protests in Thailand producing a prime minister who once headed the country's powerful military, the hacking of JP Morgan Chase and other major banks, the Ebola outbreak in certain West African nations, Russia's recent incursion (or invasion) into Eastern Ukraine, the accidental killing of a gun instructor by his 9 year old student in Arizona, etc. (Ironically, ISIS has been using the Internet effectively as a recruiting and terror tool. Indeed, this e Internet is a double edged sword/pen!)The point is slogans and sound bites do not make for a better country and governing a vast country like China and steering a vast economy like that of the US require balancing the good and the bad. That's the take away for me after reading this book in today's vastly complex world, which is growing smaller.While distilling history, whether contemporary or ancient, into a readable book, especially in today's hyper-fast world, is not like distilling the finest Scotch whiskies to be sold and consumed in the usual 750 ml bottles, Mr. Osnos is absolutely forthright when he states:"The truth was that I struggled with the question of how much to write about Ai Weiwei -- or, for that matter, the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng, or the Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo. How much did their ordeals really tell us about China? If the average news consumer in the West read (or watched or heard) no more than one China story a week, should it be about people with dramatic lives or typical lives? The hardest part about writing from China was not navigating the authoritarian bureaucracy or the occasional stint in a police station. It was the problem of proportions: How much of the drama was light and how much was dark? How much was about opportunity and how much was about repression? From far away it was difficult for outsiders to judge, but I found that up close it wasn't much easier, because it depended on where you were looking."Indeed, our eyes, ears, noses and other senses shape how and what we view, process, interpret, replay in our minds and then retell them and how we retell them depend upon how we perceive the real and imagined biases, expectations and reactions of our audiences. This book too went through all of that and then some. However, as I noted in the beginning, I highly recommend this book to readers who are interested in understanding China in all of its glories, limitations and failures.In the humble opinion of this reviewer, who has been a novice student of geopolitical events since my days in college, I found this book heavily peppered very useful insights. Here is one illustrative example.Mr. Osnos writes:"In China, one of the most difficult things to do was to gauge public opinion. Polls provided some insights, but only up to a point, because anyone who spent much time in China was reminded that asking citizens of an authoritarian country [even in the USA, based on my own personal experiences participating in polls] for their views on politics, over the phone, did not produce candid answers. Viewed from afar, the bursts of nationalism, the occasional violence, could make it appear as if China were boiling with patriotic anger. But, up close, it was not, and was difficult to know how many people really shared that sentiment. The Party had always prided itself on articulating the 'central melody' of Chinese life, but as the years passed, the Party's rendition of what 'most Chinese' believed because the state media and the political system were designed not to amplify public opinion but to impose a shape upon it. Nationalism, like any other note in the melody, might surge to the surface at one moment and fade into the background at another, but was it the mainstream view?"This insight is particularly poignant, at least for me, as an American citizen who voted in the recent November 2014 mid-term election, where every media outlet would have their audiences believe that the Republic had crushed the Democrats back into the stone ages and the Obama Presidency has run its course, even though President Obama still has two more years to run the Executive Office and serve as the Commander-in-Chief of all US armed forces.Mr. Osnos is spot on when he writes the following:"The struggle over creativity extended far beyond films and novels. China's economy was at a turning point: the age of cheap labor was ending, and Chinese leaders were desperately trying to foster innovation that could push the country beyond the assembly line. It was investing more in research and development than any country but the United States, and it had surpassed the United States and Japan to become the largest filer of patents. But many of them had little value; they had been filed to meet political targets or attract funding. China was producing more scientific papers than anywhere but the United States, but on measurements of quality (how often the average paper was cited by others), China was not even in the top ten. Academic fraud was rampant. . . . In a government backed study of six thousand Chinese scientists, one-third admitted that they had fabricated data or plagiarized."This book does enhances scholarship on China. American university students intending to embark on a career in China should definitely read this book.

Age of Ambition is an excellent look at China in the last decade through the eyes of the people living through the change that is occurring. While so much is written about China from so many angles, this is the first book I've read that explores the country and the transition it has been making through the lives of people living through it. None of the perspectives that are in the book are necessarily things that one hasnt heard analyzed but the way in which the people included give their opinions gives a much more personal perspective on things like nationalism, economic priority, corruption and social contract. Definitely a must read to get a look into how China's developement actually has impacted people's lives and expectations.The developement of China has obviously impacted a lot of people in different ways. Instead of broad strokes generalizations, Age of Ambition follows the lives of economists, artists, bloggers, journalists and reform minded civilians in general. It is split into 3 parts of which the first is titled Fortune. The book is somewhat chronological and starts with the life of a taiwanese captain who defected to the mainland ( specific identity of this character is given later) when economic developement was in its infancy. The author weaves in the starting point of the end of the cultural revolution and the regime change to Deng to give the unfamiliar reader a sense of the history. The author then jumps into the story of an online dating entrepreneur and Li Yang a famous large audience English instructor. This section really details the beginnings of the careers of the first generation of entrepreneurs and discusses the starts of their businesses and how they looked to make their fortune and how that impacted some of their followers and people around them.The author then moves onto the section labled Truth. The author goes through his experiences during times like the olympics and the growth of the internet. One is introduced to a host of new characters some young, some old. The author has been in touch with so much of celebrity society in China through the last decade it is remarkable; both artists, political dissidents and popular bloggers have all detailed parts of their perspectives to the author who weaves them together expertly. In Truth, part of the facade of uniform growth peels away. The way in which growth as a sole priority affected people is explored- unrest in Tibet and how people domestically viewed it as well as their views on foreign perspectives. One is given the narrative of intelligent nationalists as well as disillusioned civilians at the growing corruption (not opposite perspectives but not uniform in perspective on what China's priorities should be). The author walks through many of the important moments for the clash of old political economy and the new desires of the people that come with the growth. Included are things like the failure of the high speed rail, the earthquake in Sichuan the networth of the families of China's political families and Bo Xi Lai's scandal.The book ends with a section titled Faith. The author tries to weave together the differing perspectives of the population about the change and what it means for them and how they view the future. As with everything there are lots of differing perspectives but a lot of overlap as well. People see the same things but have differing priorities as well as means of dealing with their stresses. The growth of China has reignited religion and reflections on past philosophy namely Confusianism. The trouble that Ai Wei Wei faced is gone through in detail, as well as Chen Guangcheng. The author does a great job reinforcing that the issues faced by some of the typical people who are in news headlines are not the only Chinese experience but a repurcussion of the battles that are fought by highly individual people in a system that is only just coming to terms with allowing for individual expression.Age of Ambition was really enjoyable to read. It gives both personal reflection as well as great diversity of experiences in the same book making it extremely well rounded. I think it really helps one understand how China's growth is affecting people and how their perspectives on the change is a function of their individual characters more than some overarching societal reasons. There is no question that China's growth has brought about a lot of positive and negative things but at the same time people all dont tow the party line and have widely differing views. Similarly dissidents in China dont all want the same thing but all respond to differing experiences and beliefs. One becomes slightly more familiar with how life in China has changed through reading Age of Ambition.

There are lots of books about China. This is one of the better ones I have read. It has many merits. Despite using the familiar technique of interviews, the author seeks out the views of a range of Chinese, including ardent nationalists as well as dissidents. The presentation of these stories is thought-provoking and allows one to appreciate better the complexities in the relationship between the Communist Party and the Chinese people. One example springs to mind, the founder of a pro-government news website set up by an English-speaking major in Western Philosophy who is shown the infamous picture of the ‘tank man’ of Tiananmen Square, does not deny the anonymous man’s courage. He salutes his courage but also accepts the Communist Party’s rationale of its right to rule: that only it stands between chaos and progress. His thinking is not black and white. He is aware of his country’s shortcomings but wants criticism to be ‘constructive’. Ironically, his own website is shut down by the government for 5 months for being too nationalist. There is a stratum of people who love their country but want to see change, and have confidence in the Party to deliver it. The question is whether the Party will allow such a middle ground. That gives a flavour of some of the complexities he encountered in the eight years he spent in the country.The old Party States of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, once they had achieved ‘socialism’, sought to freeze social change. Not so the Chinese Communist Party – except in one respect, in the field of ideas. For all the transformations it has overseen, the Party’s mentality is still that of an ‘underground party’, as artist Ai Wei put it. It is hostile to any intellectual challenges and nervous about is lasting ability to maintain its grip on power, in the teeth of the gales of social and economic change it has unleashed. The stories of this book show that this is getting harder to do. A much-touted Pew Poll indicated that 87 per cent of the population approved approved of the Party’s performance. But this was one telephone poll, conducted in the shadow of an authoritarian state. Scepticism of how representative it is is justified. The Party’s expenditure on surveillance, censorship and policing – now in excess of defence spending - suggests it is less assured of public support than its braggadocio suggests. He is sceptical that the Party can hold the ring indefinitely but ventures no predictionsIt is impossible for any single writer to capture the essence of a country of 1.3 billion people in headlong rush to modernity.. There are no comparable precedents, either in speed or in scale. The outcome of this is anyone’s guess – not that this has stopped many from trying. This book has no such pretensions. It situates the stories it tells against the background of change so it is not just a collection of anecdotes but nor does it lose human interest. Overall, it is a must read for anyone interested in China’s transformation.

China changes so quickly that any book attempting to show what it is like, may by necessity quickly date. This book, for instance, comes before Xi Jinping tightened his trip on power, abolished term limits and de facto introduced a cult of himself. But it is still topical, well written and fascinating, and excellent read for anyone wanting to know more about China without delving into the politics and economics from above.

This book covers a wide range of down to Earth practical issues, from a defector from Taiwan to how China works in practice. I found it engrossing as the human stories flowed through this book. It has certainly improved my understanding of China.

Very well balanced piece of writing, the author takes a 360 perspective when presenting his work. I have read quite a bit about on this subject but Osnos has given me probably the most authentic insight I have yet to come across. I would recommend this book and furthermore would love to read more of his work.Well done Evan, more of the same please.

People describe this as entertaining. I think it is brilliant, disturbing, insightful and essential reading if you are visiting or studying China. His easy style makes content which we should all find disquieting, very digestible.