Lucid explanation of global economic trends

Jacques' book's lucid prose and textbook explanations of global economic trends is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the rise of East Asia. Jacques focuses on China as he analyzes the rise of East Asia and the competing modernities of the 21st century.

Scott Peterson's narration is sped up and edited, which compresses the content for a faster listen. I enjoyed this. What I did not enjoy, however, is that Peterson made ZERO EFFORT to PRONOUNCE CHINESE, making most words unrecognizable. It would have taken Peterson maybe an extra hour of work to learn the fundamentals of pronunciation as Simon Vance did for his narration of Lost on Planet China. Peteron's lazy, ambiguous pronunciation will be extremely frustrating for anyone with even a cursory knowledge of China.

5 stars for solid content. 2 stars for sub-par narration and lazy pronunciation.

14 people found this helpful

Excellent, Even Handed

I doubt I could be as even handed as this book. It really made me stop to consider the inevitability of China's rise to the top and how our acceptance of this or not will well determine our fate as Americans. Falling to second is never pleasant but it will happen and sooner than we think.

Will it be a soft landing or hard fall? Depends on whether can accept what is going to happen with grace.

Painful but very, very well expressed. I highly recommend this book.

7 people found this helpful

Its gets better

This book is way too long and would have benefited greatly from the eye of an editor. First, they could have removed all references to the word "inconceivable" which would have reduced the length of the book by a good 10%. Removing duplicate sentences could have reduced it by a further 35%. Elimiating the inane anecdotes would have cut a further 15%. It would still have been a bit a long winded.

However for those willing to sit through the 16.5 hours, it is quite illuminating and in the 2nd half, things do start to come together in a compelling way.

12 people found this helpful

Find another narrator, please!

The narrators, voice, accent, rhythm, and miss pronunciations of words was quite irritating. I often wanted to turn them off or switch to another narrator. The book was well written and had a lot of great information theories history etc. I enjoyed the
book but not the narration.

3 people found this helpful

Comprehensive and Gracefully Written

Martin Jacques manages to make a scholarly work not just readable but thoroughly enjoyable. Highly recommended as an introduction to modern China.

1 person found this helpful

Great Audiobook

Great audiobook! It tells in every aspect one can imagine how the global geopolitc power is shifting from the west to the east, specially to China and how that affects the western way of life.

It is a required book to understand the current situation of the planet and many major discussions like climate, technology, entrepreneurship and specially, Democracy

1 person found this helpful

Disappointing

This is an interesting topic, but the story is not told in an interesting or lively way. The author uses a lot of dubious statistics such as the GDP of China and India in the 18th and 19th century. These are both hard to take seriously and dull. Also, the cultural analysis about China, the US and Japan sound cliched and uninteresting.

6 people found this helpful

poorly researched, badly read

First, that reader has no business reading a book full of foreign language names without learning the proper pronunciation of those names. This odd reading does, however, faithfully reflect the author's reliance on unreliable sources to pontificate on Asian countries he is largely unfamiliar with -- yes, there are superficial observations that are not always wrong, but there is too little depth of understanding. Yes, the book is full of pretend understanding drawn from logic rather than observation or in depth research, but logic never has created truth. This book is a good example of faulty conclusions drawn from other people's incorrect observations. It is unclear why Audible is entertaining such drivel.

dry read with a lot of information

finished slogging through this monster. I picked it up at the outbreak of coronavirus is hoping to learn something about Chinese medical system. there wasn't much information on that topic but there was a huge amount of information about the rise of various Asian political structures. Probably interesting to people who like political history and everything Asian, but for me it was pure nerdy quest for information that I listened all the way through

Do your homework

So many mispronounced Chinese terms that it makes it hard to follow the narrator without a book. While I empathize that Chinese isn't the narrator's native tongue, the fact that they don't even sound close to the actual terms shows he didn't really do his homework (e.g. pronouncing the dynasty Qin as "chin" is passable but as "kin" is confusing). I don't think the author would approve as well.

The content by Jacques is great. Just buy the book and avoid the audible version