China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power

In one of the best books on contemporary China, Kristoff and WuDunn ponder a central paradox: an explosion of wealth and entrepreneurship in the world's third biggest economy (after the U.S. and Japan) flourishes under a repressive, authoritarian regime. This husband-and-wife team, Pulitzer Prize-winning Beijing correspondents for the New York Times from 1988 to 1993, take us from the Xinjiang region in China's far west, where an Islamic revival threatens Party rule, to occupied Tibet seething with hatred for the Chinese overlords. They report on widespread alienation from the government, massive rural poverty, rampant bribery and corruption, increasing discrimination against women in the workplace, routine abduction and trafficking in women and children. The authors also perceive ``the embryo of a civil society'' emerging that may one day undermine the dictatorship. WuDunn, who is Chinese-American, writes of her sometimes frustrating search for her native identity in a regimented society pervaded by a ``culture of silence.'' Photos. Author tour. (Sept.)