China Watcher; Confessions of a Peking Tom

Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 2010. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xiii, [1], 328 pages. Signed by the author on the half-title page. Autographed copy sticker on DJ. Includes Foreword and Preface, and chapters on The Occidental Tourist; A Dissertation Is Not a Dinner Party; Confessions of a Peking Tom; Through the Looking Glass; Democracy Deferred; Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics; The Road to Tiananmen; After the Duluge; China Rising; God in the Machine; The Wild, Wild West; Beijing Revisited; China Watching, Then and Now; The Gini in the Jr; and Loose Ends. Includes Epilogue, Author's Notes, Suggestions for Further Reading, and Index. Contains Epilogue, Author's Notes, Suggestions for Further Reading, and Index. Personal portraits of the American scholarly community and of a changing China, from the Cultural Revolution right up to the present day, make this a book that is hard to put down. Richard Baum has given us a rare and intimate gift: a wonderfully funny and revealing chronicle of adventure as experienced by one of the greatest China watchers of our time. Richard Dennis Baum (July 8, 1940 - December 14, 2012) was an American China watcher, professor emeritus of political science at UCLA, and former director emeritus of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, noted for his many academic works on Chinese politics. On February 20, 1989, Baum and scholars Harry Harding and Michel Oksenberg met with George Bush, then incoming ambassador to China James Lilley, and others to brief the president on U.S.-China relations. Baum advised that it would be better to talk about human rights in the most general terms possible. This audacious and illuminating memoir by Richard Baum, a senior China scholar and sometime policy advisor, reflects on forty years of learning about and interacting with the People's Republic of China, from the height of Maoism during the author's UC Berkeley student days in the volatile 1960s through globalization. Anecdotes from Baum's professional life illustrate the alternately peculiar, frustrating, fascinating, and risky activity of China watching - the process by which outsiders gather and decipher official and unofficial information to figure out what's really going on behind China's veil of political secrecy and propaganda. Baum writes entertainingly, telling his narrative with witty stories about people, places, and eras. China Watcher will appeal to scholars and followers of international events who lived through the era of profound political and academic change described in the book, as well as to younger, post-Mao generations, who will enjoy its descriptions of the personalities and political forces that shaped the modern field of China studies. Richard Baum is distinguished professor of political science at UCLA and director emeritus of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies. His publications include China in Ferment: Perspectives on the Cultural Revolution; Prelude to Revolution: Mao, the Party, and the Peasant Question, 1962-1966; Reform and Reaction in Post-Mao China: The Road to Tiananmen; and Burying Mao: Chinese Politics in the Age of Deng Xiaoping. He is the presenter of the Great Courses video lecture series "The Fall and Rise of China," published by the Teaching Company.
"Rick Baum has been both a leading scholar and a scholarly leader in the field of contemporary Chinese politics since the 1960s. This book provides intensely personal portraits of the American scholarly community and of a changing China, from the Cultural Revolution right up until now. I read it with great enthusiasm and enormous pleasure. It's the kind of book that's hard to put down." - Harry Harding, University of Virginia. "The special charm of China Watcher is the way Baum draws the reader into a world of musty archives and political rivalries, both grand and petty, to give us insights into the political, social, and economic transformation of China. Along the way we are treated to cameos from a wide range of actors, some of whom - like George H. W. Bush and Chalmers Johnson - go on to great notoriety. I literally had trouble putting the book down." - Michael L. Ross, UCLA. "Baum is one of the most insightful China watchers around and he provides a first-hand overview of developments in China interwoven with the nature and significance of China watching. He blends his own personal journal with the larger events, displaying liveliness and analysis." - Thomas Gold, University of California, Berkeley. "Simply wonderful! I read it right through." - Andrew Walder, Stanford University. "Both informative and humorous, this book is well-written, amusing, and provides a comprehensive view of the field of modern Chinese studies." - Merle Goldman, Harvard University and Boston University.