The Chinese Dream - A review

Early this year I was browsing through the @Sinalunya Twitter timeline when I saw the promotion of a book that I thought it was promising: The Chinese Dream, by Helen H. Wang. It was advertised by the author herself and the information on her website convinced me to give it a try and order it from Amazon.com.

"The Chinese Dream: The rise of the world's largest middle class and what it means to you" is a very well written book that is also very easy to read, but by no means is a simple book. Chinese-born, US-resident Helen H. Wang examines in detail the situation of present-day China, explaining what she knows, describing what she sees and analyzing what the people she meets and interviews reply to her. She covers all the relevant aspects in today's China, such as society, politics, economy, environment, religion and spirituality, highlighting both what are the benefits and the challenges of such a fast transformation that the country is undergoing. A recurring element throughout the book is the constant reminder on how East and West can benefit from each other's degree of development if things are taken from an open mind perspective and mutual fears are avoided: a generous approach from a holistic view would benefit not only both countries but the entire world, whereas a greedy and selfish attitude would represent just the opposite. This is very well explained in the summaries at the end of each chapter, in which the concepts of oneness on thought, culture, modernization, economy, environment, politics and spirit, respectively, are exposed. Having herself one foot on each culture, it becomes logical that Helen H. Wang often reminds the reader how the situation for everyone would improve if the best of both worlds could be obtained and combined.

Because of the kind of stories and facts explained in the book, with interviews to several revealing characters, and also because of the enlighting information provided, it reminded me of "An Empire Wilderness: Travel's into America's Future" by Robert D. Kaplan, but set in present-day China instead of United States. Because of her origins, Helen H. Wang had a privileged view over China, its culture and its situation, something that would have been more difficult even for more experienced writers such as Robert D. Kaplan himself. We all were lucky she decided to write it, indeed.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="199" caption="The Chinese Dream, by Helen H. Wang"][/caption]

See the promotional video of the book at The Chinese Dream from Helen H. Wang's website