[.uk] Hegemon: China's Plan to Dominate Asia and the World (ISBN 1893554082)

Amazon.com Review:
To understand modern China, writes Steven W. Mosher, one must understand that country's ancient sense of self. For 48 of the last 50 centuries, China has had the largest population and the most advanced economy in the world--and the Chinese know it. They have always viewed themselves as "culturally superior to other peoples," writes Mosher, an expert on China and author of A Mother's Ordeal. The Chinese also possess a self-identity dependent upon the concept of what Mosher calls "the Hegemon": "the non-Western notion that the premier goal of foreign policy should be to establish absolute dominance over one's region and, by slow extension, the world." All the feel-good talk coming out of Washington about "strategic partnerships" and "most-favored-nation status" are woefully naive, says Mosher. The Chinese, he writes, believe they are in "a worldwide contest with the U.S. to replace the current Pax Americana with a Pax Sinica." In other words, they want nothing less than to displace the United States as the world's sole superpower. Mosher debunks what he considers to be the most pervasive and harmful myths about China: the notion that democracy is inevitably in its future, that market forces will advance freedom, that exposure to American culture will lead to change, and that technological developments such as the Internet will propel reform. In short, he firmly opposes all the rosy scenarios embraced by Congress and the Clinton administration. This is a provocative book--and one the Chinese government surely won't welcome, given its deep suspicion and frequent reference to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Neither will many American elites, who come in for a severe beating: "It is a scandal that most former secretaries of state (beginning with Henry Kissinger), most former national security advisors (also beginning with Kissinger) and most of their senior deputies have gone into the China trade subsequent to their government service, often without even allowing the passage of a decent interval before beginning to cash in." Mosher wants Americans to make a more cold-eyed assessment of a country he believes is not a friend, but a threat. --John J. Miller

The Chinese keep threatening while their apologists keep denying:
The Chinese keep threatening while their apologists keep denying the threat. Steven Mosher's Hegemon: China's Plan to Dominate Asia and the World is still relevant in the post-9/11 world. The Islamofascist terrorists can hurt us, China can destroy us and actually aims to do so. Chinese Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu warned in July 2005 that if the U.S. interfered in a Chinese attack on Taiwan it could lead to a Chinese nuclear attack on U.S. cities. Gen. Xiong Guangkai, the Chinese Army's second highest ranking general, made the same threat ten years earlier in 1995, saying that Americans "care more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei." I'll believe the threats of Chinese generals over the self-serving denials of their stooges here in the West.

Mosher's personal vendetta against the PRC:
Steven Mosher is concerned about China's human rights and he has good reason. However, after being arrested and expelled from the country for going somewhere the Chinese government barred foreigners from going, he now has a grudge. I'm not defending Beijing's policy of controlling where foreign researchers and journalists can travel in the country, but to extrapolate prohibitions on foreigners and authoritarian human rights practices is no means to condemn an entire nation. China's elites control the nation's population to avoid widespread famine. Their methods are less than perfect by far and their implementation at the village levels allows for improper actions, some of which would be illegal in the United States. If anything, this shows us how weak the central authority is in China, much like the late Ming and Qing empires before their collapse. The bottom line is Mosher is angry because Beijing made him persona non grata, thereby keeping him from futher exposing human rights abuses. When dealing with the Chinese government, nations must be careful, particularly when it concerns human rights, but this does not make everything the Chinese do part of a sinister plot.

Just Shy of Excellent:
I was rather skeptical of this book; I thought perhaps it was of the mindless "China bad" variety that you occasionally see nowadays, aimed at paranoids and Americans who sense China is a threat but aren't sure exactly why. My skepticism, as it turns out, was unwarranted. This is a very good book and could have been an excellent one with a bit of tweaking. Still, I give it four stars for what is essentially page after page of quality information. To begin with, Mosher understands the Chinese mindset. The Chinese don't possess, for example, a linear view of history and they STILL - to this very day - consider themselves to be culturally superior to everyone everywhere. They were once a mighty empire and so will they be again. Or so they believe. The twentieth century was just a temporary setback. China resents the West and the US in particular and the author - meticulously - explains why. This book is also jam packed with military information - statistics galore and loads of details about the modernization of the PLA. In fact, it reads like a (lenghty but engaging) briefing in places. The amount of research is wholly impressive and it helps to concretize the central claim. There are weak points, however. The author engages in some slippery slope thinking (first, China would reclaim nation/territory X, and then nation/territory Y) and he employs "us and them" into his narrative, i.e. "We need to ... to prevent them from ...." I don't think this is helpful, or very academic. There are also several unqualified claims, and a few other problems, but overwhelmingly the book works. When people/leaders in the West begin talking about China, I'm always amazed at how little they actually know. Westerners view China through a sort of filter, applying their own system of thought to what is an alien, ancient, and vastly idiosyncratic culture and way of thinking. What Mosher is especially good at is getting you to see things through the Chinese perspective. Although he never says so explicitly, a point that he is trying to make is: it doesn't matter what the West thinks of China (friend, foe, what have you) it only matters what China thinks of the West. And they (they being mainly the government) don't like us. At all. To find out what they think, read this book. As an author who has been observing China for nearly a decade, I have reached many of the same conclusions. They say the best books tell you what you already know, and so admittedly this added to my reading enjoyment. Western politicians especially ought to read this book. The author cuts through the academic fog surrounding China and gets down to brass tacks. Troy Parfitt, author

Mosher not afraid to speak the truth:
In this book Mosher gives irrefutable evidence of the Chinese government's plan toward world domination. This threat is all the more dangerous considering how, especially since its forceful implementation of Communism, China has shown that it is willing to use any means, including Mao's genocide on the largest scale ever before seen in human history, to extend its absolute power over peoples' lives. Mosher is far from a paranoid armchair thinker; he is an expert in Chinese culture who has lived in the country and speaks the language. Read the facts and see for yourself.

hysterical nonsense:
Mosher's central thesis, well documented with error, misunderstanding and paranoid bias, suggests China has been hell-bent on world domination since Mosher's ancestors were living in caves (possibly they still are). Fast-forward to the present, he finds a yellow menace in every teapot of the "Middle Kingdom" (which properly translated means, literally, "middle" or "center" "land", not "kingdom", a common misconception of non-Chinese speakers). If you have a taste for right-wing paranoia, this makes an amusing read. BTW, another reviewer, Chuck Devore, who writes a glowing review, happens to be the co-author of another of Mosher's paranoid fantasies "China Attacks" (Taiwan). No further comment.