Henry Kissinger On China...

For part of our class, we had to read a book about China that's, in one way or another, related to China's overwhelming economic growth. The purpose of this read is multi-faceted, to give us knowledge about China's economic situation as well as stimulate our experiences while in China. After a good amount of thought, I decided to go with "Henry Kissinger on China" by Henry Kissinger. One of the main reason's I choose this book is because I am an economics major and Kissinger is one of the most revered economic thinkers in modern day America. In this book, Kissinger details his experiences in China when he was the National Security Advisor for the Nixon Administration. Interestingly enough, he is more well known to the Chinese than many of our President's, and this is probably related to his involvement in ending hostility and isolation between the United States and China. In this book, as I had said before, Kissinger talks about his first travels to China. He talks about his perceptions on ancient Chinese history and how the friends he made in China, especially since they covered many generations, impacted his view on China. He also talked extensively about war and how that played a influence in China, such as the Korean War and the Vietnam War. One thing I really liked about this book is that he talked about Mao Zedong enough to give the man credit for his accomplishment's. Mao is, I would wager, the most highly revered Chinese person in China's history, and while reading this book, you could almost feel Kissinger's emotion and respect for the man when he meet him. This is especially interesting because you would expect much more hostility between the two, given that the Cold War was in full throttle at the time. All and all, I'd say that this was a very interesting book and I couldn't explain nearly all of it in this blog post. It was a very good read and I learned quite a bit about China through reading it. I would certainly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about China, especially if they want to go to the country.