RaveThe Financial Times (UK)... fascinating ... While focusing on the Chinese script, the book ultimately tells a story of much broader importance and furnishes the reader with a sense of the obstacles that China had to overcome to \'join\' the modern world.
Timothy Brook
RaveThe Financial Times (UK)...excellent ... The power of this book lies partly in the fact that Brook, a professor at the University of British Columbia...does not overstate his case. While he does not seek to claim that China’s current actions are prefigured by the past, an attentive reader cannot fail to notice extraordinary parallels ... His book also recognises that the attitude of the Chinese state toward foreigners is complex and often contradictory. In perhaps his most powerful chapter, Brook sets out a scintillating argument between two senior Ming dynasty officials over whether Jesuit missionaries represented a boon or a bane to the Great State.
Parag Khanna
PositiveThe Financial TimesAn authoritative book which may well become a standard reference, Parag Khanna casts the net wider to deliver a compelling argument that Asia — rather than merely China — is the current and future lodestar for the global economy ... Khanna does not overstretch his forecasts, wisely restricting himself to a loosely imagined \'fusion of civilisations\'.
