{"product_id":"the-man-who-changed-china-the-life-and-legacy-of-jiang-zemin","title":"The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin","description":"\u003cp\u003eJiang Zemins life and leadership sweep through almost eighty tumultuous years of Chinese history: Japanese occupation  Civil War  Great Leap Forward  Cultural Revolution  Tiananmen Square  and  more recently  dramatic economic growth  tensions with Taiwan  and opportunities and confrontations with America. Jiangs story is an epic of war  deprivation  revolution  political turmoil  social convulsion  economic reform  national transformation  and international resurgence. To Robert Lawrence Kuhn  a longtime China observer  understanding the legacy of Jiang Zemin is essential for understanding the challenges of contemporary China. By examining Jiangs life  we observe the clash between Chinas traditional culture and chaotic history  and we appreciate how its changes impact the entire world.  In The Man Who Changed China  Kuhn  who was cited by the Asian Wall Street Journal for the unprecedented access he was given in the course of writing this book  has produced what the Journal called probably the closest thing to an authorized biography thats possible in Communist China. Here a reader will find a complex and nuanced portrait of Chinas senior leader  whose policies continue to exert great influence over the course of his country. Kuhn offers insight into how the Japanese occupation during Jiangs teenage years imprinted his psyche for life  how he became a Communist  and how  decades later  he struggled to transform the Party in the face of withering criticism.  In a sense  Kuhn argues  Jiangs early skeptics got it right: He was a transitional figurebut not in the way they had meant. With unshakable if paternalistic vision  a lifelong love of Chinese civilization  and backroom political skills that no one had anticipated  Jiang Zemin became an unexpected agent of change  effecting the transition from a traumatized society to a confident  prosperous country rapidly ascending in the new world order. Kuhn shows how Jiang led China through an amazing metamorphosisfrom a fretful country destabilized by the turmoil and crackdown in Tiananmen Square into a vibrant nation that became a primary engine of global economic growth. Above all Jiang is a Chinese patriotand it is important to appreciate what that really means. In offering this unusually intimate and comprehensive personal and political biography  Kuhn demonstrates that Jiang Zemins life personifies the history of contemporary China  giving invaluable insight into what China is today and will become in the future.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44946383274037,"sku":"ByrdShop_1400054745","price":228.14,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781400054749.jpg?v=1769947117","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-man-who-changed-china-the-life-and-legacy-of-jiang-zemin","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}