China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power | 
 enlarge | Author: Rob Gifford
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  51 reviews
Sales Rank: 80250
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 1400064678
Dewey Decimal Number: 951.06
EAN: 9781400064670
ASIN: 1400064678
Publication Date: May 29, 2007
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Product Description
Route 312 is the Chinese Route 66. It flows three thousand miles from east to west, passing through the factory towns of the coastal areas, through the rural heart of China, then up into the Gobi Desert, where it merges with the Old Silk Road. The highway witnesses every part of the social and economic revolution that is turning China upside down.
In this utterly surprising and deeply personal book, acclaimed National Public Radio reporter Rob Gifford, a fluent Mandarin speaker, takes the dramatic journey along Route 312 from its start in the boomtown of Shanghai to its end on the border with Kazakhstan. Gifford reveals the rich mosaic of modern Chinese life in all its contradictions, as he poses the crucial questions that all of us are asking about China: Will it really be the next global superpower? Is it as solid and as powerful as it looks from the outside? And who are the ordinary Chinese people, to whom the twenty-first century is supposed to belong?
Gifford is not alone on his journey. The largest migration in human history is taking place along highways such as Route 312, as tens of millions of people leave their homes in search of work. He sees signs of the booming urban economy everywhere, but he also uncovers many of the country’s frailties, and some of the deep-seated problems that could derail China’s rise.
The whole compelling adventure is told through the cast of colorful characters Gifford meets: garrulous talk-show hosts and ambitious yuppies, impoverished peasants and tragic prostitutes, cell-phone salesmen, AIDS patients, and Tibetan monks. He rides with members of a Shanghai jeep club, hitchhikes across the Gobi desert, and sings karaoke with migrant workers at truck stops along the way.
As he recounts his travels along Route 312, Rob Gifford gives a face to what has historically, for Westerners, been a faceless country and breathes life into a nation that is so often reduced to economic statistics. Finally, he sounds a warning that all is not well in the Chinese heartlands, that serious problems lie ahead, and that the future of the West has become inextricably linked with the fate of 1.3 billion Chinese people.
“Informative, delightful, and powerfully moving . . . Rob Gifford’s acute powers of observation, his sense of humor and adventure, and his determination to explore the wrenching dilemmas of China’s explosive development open readers’ eyes and reward their minds.”
–Robert A. Kapp, president, U.S.-China Business Council, 1994-2004
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| Customer Reviews: Read 46 more reviews...
 Audio version of "China Road" combines best aspects of memoir, news reporting July 22, 2008
Some of the most compelling nonfiction
audiobooks produced for American listeners
today are about China. They tend to fit into two
categories -- the personal memoir, such as Peter
Hessler's "River Town: Two Years on the
Yangtze," and the fact-driven, such as Ted
Fishman's "China Inc." Both of these are
excellent works filled with fascinating nuggets
for anyone with an interest in China. But one
audiobook that outdoes them both is Rob
Gifford's "China Road" (Blackstone, 9 CDs,
2007), which combines the best aspects of
memoir and news reporting. I liked it so much
that I listened to it twice, a few months apart.
Before writing the book, Gifford had been
visiting China for 20 years and working there for
six years as a journalist. Planning to leave China
for Europe, he decided to make one long last
journey, a two-month trip of 3000 miles from
east to west along China's route 312, the
"people's road." He did it the slow way, by
hitchhiking on trucks, taking local trains, and
sometimes hiring a driver. With his fluent
Mandarin and his in-depth knowledge of Chinese
laws, customs, history and geography, he
becomes an imbedded observer who reports
accurately and thoroughly, but always with a
touch of humor.
As he quickly points out, China is not a country
but an empire. It encompasses one-fifth of
humanity, with a multitude of ethnic groups and
languages. Because the setting changes so
frequently throughout the journey, you could
listen to the CDs in any order without losing
much. Gifford says there's hardly anything about
China that isn't interesting, then proves it. He
meets enthusiastic and successful Amway sales
reps in the middle of the Gobi Desert. He sees a
truck broken down by the side of the road, but
his driver keeps going because of "the first rule
in China: don't get involved." Horse races are
popular but betting is illegal. No problem: you
can place your money on a "guess." Cell phone
salesmen do a thriving business all along the old
Silk Road route because there's perfect reception,
and everyone wants a phone.
China, says Gifford, is 30 years behind the U.S.
militarily; it spends $50 billion a year compared
to $400 billion. But far more significant, he says,
is the speedy change that is shaking up Chinese
society. Up to 200 million Chinese have left their
home towns in search of a better life -- the
largest migration in history. The greatest danger
to China's future, he believes, is pollution: of the
world's 20 most polluted cities, 16 are in China.
There's a chronic water shortage, and many of
China's rivers are dangerously contaminated.
Other negatives: Chinese women have the highest
suicide rate in the world; it's the leading cause of
death for Chinese women age 18 to 34. There is
an AIDS crisis, especially in Hunan province,
stemming from the extraction and sale of blood.
But the authorities simply try to cover it up. The
whole society, according to Gifford, is shot
through with corruption, which comes from local
officials, not big politicians. For example, trucks
are often stopped for speeding, but the fines can
range widely, so that police officers can pocket
most of the money without needing to report it.
The author says that China cannot be both an
empire and a democracy. That might explain
some of the contradictions that he confronts by
questioning his subjects to the point of
discomfort. He interviews a woman who
performs abortions on other women who are eight
months pregnant, and asks how she can reconcile
her role as a mother and a health professional by
killing fully formed babies. He interviews a
young Tibetan whose parents forced him to grow
up speaking only Mandarin at home in order to
improve his job prospects. He now teaches
Chinese to Tibetans, and the author probes to
find how the man feels about aiding the
conquerors.
Near the end of his journey, Gifford lands in
Urumchi, a very modern, high-tech capital, which
is farther from the ocean than any other city in
the world. A century ago, it took 45 days for a
letter to get from there to Beijing, and that was
considered fast. In the last 15 years, its
population has grown from 300,000 to 1.5 million
in 15 years. He marvels that it is almost
unrecognizable from the city he had seen only a
short time before. It's located in Xinjiang,
China's fastest-growing region for foreign trade.
Gifford's trip, and route 312, end in Korgaz, a
forlorn little town across the border from
Kazakhstan. Like the author, I didn't want the
road to end.
A "Seize The Moment" View Of An Evolving China June 15, 2008
Rob Gifford manages to capture the rapid change and flux--in conflict and concert with the past--that characterizes 21st century China as he travels Route 312 from the metropolis of Shanghai to the remote town of Korgaz, at the border crossing to Kazakhstan. Joining Rob on his "seize the moment" itinerary, the reader is given an intimate "backpack" view of a China and its people that is unforgettable, and in many cases irreconcilable with the image China portrays as a superpower . Through his vivid narration, the sights, sounds, smells, hopes, dreams and shadows of life for "Old Hundred Names" come alive in the consciousness of the reader. It was a transformative read.
A Brilliant View into Current and Historical China June 3, 2008
I have listened to the audio book of China Road while traveling back and forth between Ashland, OR and San Francisco. Rod Gifford does a magnificent job of weaving his present day experiences of traveling on China's "Mother Road", Route 312, the history of China and its many phases, and a view to the future and what may come next for this complex country. This should be required reading/listening for high school students. If you want a quick and broad view into the realities of this multifaceted country, China Road is it!
Entertaining, Informative, Thought-provoking May 31, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I am very glad that I read China Road before the recent earthquake because the background that the book gave me on Chinese culture and politics has helped me better understand the news coverage of the disaster. This is the mark of a book that is truly worth reading, in that it helps the reader deduce meaning from world events.
The premise and structure of the book are appealing. The author, Rob Gifford, an American journalist, hitchhikes across China on Route 312, China's equivalent of the US's Route 66, and writes about the places he visits and the people he meets. Along the way, he muses about China's history, its current building boom, its social structures and traditions, its problems related to its emergence as a global economy and its likely future as a world power. This makes for fascinating reading and, certainly for me, an entertaining way of getting to know a nation and a people who are increasingly affecting the lives of everyone on Earth.
As soon as I heard about the collapse of school buildings in the poorer provinces of China during last month's earthquake, I realized that many parents would have just lost their only child due to China's one-child policy. This, it seemed to me, would be one of the things more likely to create the kind of anger and dissatisfaction that the government will be unable to buy off by putting more consumer goods into the hands of China's growing middle-class. Sure enough. The news continues to be full of stories about the anger and resentment felt by many lower middle class parents whose children died in poorly constructed schools while the children of the wealthy survived because they attended well-built schools that did not fall during the quake. Some of the devastated schools stood right next to others that were barely scratched. That is exactly the type of situation that Gifford warns about in China Road -- an event that exposes the corruption of local governments, the results of which are so heinous that the people refuse to be appeased by more stuff.
Through reading China Road, I also came to better understand the conflict surrounding what is called Greater Tibet, some of which is actually a part of traditional China, and now see that the situation there is not quite as black and white as I once thought.
By the time Gifford reached the end of his tale of Route 312, I felt as though I had received a solid tutorial on a country that I had once only the most rudimentary knowledge about, and I was sorry to see the end of the road. Highly recommended.
 Solid Introduction to Modern China May 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm a fan of travelogues and since I'm trying to get a little more clued in about modern China, this book seemed like a good pick. After spending seven years as a correspondent for NPR, author Gifford packed his bags in 2004 to move back to England and struck out for one last Chinese adventure. Over the course of two weeks, he made his way along "Route 312", which winds a roughly northwest 3,000-mile route from Shanghai to the border with Kazakhstan. Gifford preaces hiss journey with the hope that it will help him answer the question he gets all the time about China: will it become the next global superpower, or will it crumble into chaos? With that in mind, he's off (along with an NPR production crew) on a motley assortment of buses and trucks, meeting all manner of people, from angry poor farmers to slick rich businessmen, and everyone in between (including some zealous Amway reps!). The most memorable of his casual encounters is probably the traveling government abortionist who matter-of-factly explains the need for forced abortions to Gifford.
His travels touch on pretty much everything someone reasonably conversant with modern China might already be familiar with: rural civil unrest, AIDS epidemics, the sex-trade industry, the shortage of woman in some areas, the pervasiveness of official corruption, ecological catastrophes in the making, the rise of religion, the political repression and cultural conversion of ethnic minorities, and of course the booming economic development and the confusing winds of change that follows in its wake. It's all good stuff, ably reported, however it struck me as somewhat superficial in a sense. These are all stories anyone reasonably attuned to international news and trends has probably heard on NPR, read in the Washington Post or the Economist, or seen on Frontline. The one area he doesn't touch upon, and probably should have, is the Chinese military and its vast role in China's politics and economics. Another quibble I have with the book is Gifford's blithe willingness to trot out all manner of "official" Chinese statistics throughout the book, despite general acknowledgement in much of the world that official Chinese data is hardly a reliable representation of the truth.
In conclusion, Gifford returns to the broader picture of What It All Means, and fails miserably at providing a satisfying answer. Having introduced his trip with the uneccesarily binary "will China rise or fall?" motif, he now reluctantly returns to the question, ultimately sidestepping it. This all smacks of an editor's attempt to impose a larger framework on the book, and Gifford is so obviously uncomfortable in this role that it becomes embarrassing to read on as he flails around in the role of analyst, quoting the opinions of several China scholars and pundits at length rather than providing his own analysis. One can't help but wish that someone with such depth and breadth of experience in China could have arrived at a more insightful conclusion. Still, the book has great value as an easy to read and often fun introduction to modern China for those who are interested but don't know much.
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