Jasper Becker Livres

Covid-19 has precipitated a breakdown in trust between China and the West, eroding hope that the regime will change for the better as China becomes more secure and wealthy. This ground-breaking book looks behind Beijing's official narrative to show how the Party and its leadership think and act, exposing their strengths and weaknesses when confronted by the pandemic. We can discover as much about the PRC from the Covid outbreak as we can learn about the virus and our future by looking at the PRC. Jasper Becker explains why the Wuhan Institute of Virology is not just a building. It represents a huge national effort to wrest control of global technology. Following its success with 5G, China is now looking to bio-engineering for fresh opportunities to challenge Western commercial and military interests. It's possible that this strategy of reckless experimentation--particularly with clandestine bioweapons--led to an accidental release of the virus. 'Made in China' reveals these essential links between the pandemic and the future of international relations. Coronavirus has accelerated a process already underway: China will no longer be treated as a friend of the West, and vice versa. This historic shift will affect every sphere of our lives.

The narrative explores the devastating impact of the Great Leap Forward in late 1950s and early 1960s China, which led to a catastrophic famine resulting in the deaths of over thirty million people. It highlights the tragic consequences of Chairman Mao Zedong's misguided policies, illustrating how his utopian vision turned into a historical disaster, driven not by natural calamities but by human error and political ideology.

An inside study of North Korea exposes the dangers this highly volatile country continues to pose to the world order, and the internal chaos, blind faith, rampant corruption, and terrifying cruelty of its rulers.

Communism was destroyed not from without, but from within-by a persistent failure to make its economic theories work in practice. But what exactly did go wrong with its central planning? Until the last moment, top western economists claimed that Communism was superior to western models. Even now, centralized Marxist planning retains its admirers, especially among the young. With the benefit of new archival research, we can finally grasp how falsified and manipulated statistics blindfolded Communist governments and confused western leaders, leading to staggering errors of judgement. Both sides believed that East Germany had a stronger economy than West Germany; that North Korea would overtake South Korea; that Mao's China was a paradise for its starving peasants. Those who warned that a dearth of reliable economic data would condemn central planning to irrational misallocation of investment and labor were ignored or belittled. But, ultimately, they were vindicated. Jasper Becker answers the big question: what accounts for the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union, China and everywhere else? And why don't present debates acknowledge that failure? This unconventional history of Communism and the Cold War explains why the same old clash of theories is continuing to shape the world today.

Monografie přibližuje současnou ekonomickou, politickou i společenskou situaci ČLR především z hlediska postavení jednotlivých vrstev obyvatelstva. Becker se prostřednictvím interpretace některých skutečností vývoje současné Číny snaží přiblížit aktuální postavení jednotlivých společenských skupin (např. zemědělců, intelektuálů, nositelů moci). Cílem je prokázat, že život většiny Číňanů zůstává již po staletí stejný, neboť nejpočetnější skupinu obyvatelstva stále tvoří chudí rolníci a na samém vrcholku společenské pyramidy stojí úzká mocenská elita, která ovládá celou zemi.