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January 22, 2013

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Home » Opinion » Chinese Views

American scholar explores Deng and China's transformation

By Yan Hao and Qu Jing | January 22, 2013, Tuesday | Print Edition

ON a warm winter afternoon in downtown Beijing, Professor Ezra Vogel, a top scholar on Asian studies with Harvard University, shared his behind-the-scenes stories of a biography about late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.

The simplified Chinese edition of "Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China" sold more than 500,000 copies when it was released in Beijing, Chengdu and Shenzhen on Friday, the 21st anniversary of the day Deng embarked on a tour to southern China to advocate the opening up and reform policy.

"The book was originally written for American readers, to allow more American people to understand Asia as well as the opening up and reform, which is a fundamental way to understand China today," Vogel, speaking in fluent Chinese, told Chinese reporters at the headquarters of SDX Joint Publishing Co, the publisher of the book's Chinese edition.

The original version, which took Vogel 10 years to write, was published in 2011. It won the Lionel Gelber Prize for the world's best book in English that stimulates debate on international affairs.

After that, more than 30 publishers on the Chinese mainland contacted the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the copyright owner of the book's traditional Chinese version, to buy rights to publish on the mainland.

"In the US, many people believe that no other book about Deng could compare with mine, in terms of the amount of the people I have interviewed and in what depth the book discusses the opening up and reform," Vogel said.

The professor, the former director of the John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, told Xinhua that his frequent visits to and research in China since the 1970s and his association with Harvard University made it possible for him to speak with Deng's family members and the children of many Chinese top leaders.

Vogel said he disagrees with the idea that Chinese people understand the United States better than Americans understand China.

Misunderstandings

"For the general public, it is true. But for intellectuals, I don't think so. The biggest misunderstanding or bias that the American people have is that they always consider themselves to be right, and they will not agree with other countries that have different systems of democracy and human rights than the US."

Vogel said although he believes the US has a democratic system befitting the country, there have been many intellectuals who are skeptical of the American system. He offered Chinese reporters an example, saying the US has a less efficient decision-making and implementation mechanism for high-speed trains than China and Japan.

Calling the fact absence of high-speed trains in the US "a joke," he said American procedures for land acquisition and compensation are good, but slow. "I think China's practices may not be followed but could be worth learning from."

Vogel insisted that there is still much room for the two countries to improve their mutual understanding, since Sino-US ties are the most important bilateral relations in the world. "Many American young people are quite interested in studying China," he said, adding that after Spanish, Chinese is the second-most studied language at Harvard University.

In regards to China's ongoing efforts to implement Deng Xiaoping's opening up and reform policy, Vogel said no Chinese political leader has the same, or even comparable political influence and authority as Deng.

However, if China's top leadership -the seven members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee - reach a consensus to do something, for instance, clean up corruption, they could make more progress, Vogel said.

"For instance, the policy to punish officials who had illegal personal assets in the past will probably frighten many of them, but the policy may be acceptable if the top authorities promise that officials' assets will be open to the public in two or three years," Vogel said.

"Another field in which reform is needed is the judicial system, which should be more independent and have more power under the leadership of the Communist Party of China," he said.

The authors are Xinhua writers.

Chinese Views


 

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