Age of Ambition summary

In the 1950s China was still a very poor country. Even as late as 1979, the People’s Republic of China’s per capita income was still a mere third of those in sub-Saharan Africa. So what changed? What triggered this enormous growth?

Let’s start with what didn’t work: when Mao Zedong tried to lift China out of poverty in the late 1950s, he was far from successful.

In 1966 Mao Zedong initiated a radical sociopolitical movement, the Cultural Revolution, which aimed to create a state based on total equality. The military, for example, eliminated rank, and the Party banned competitive sports in order to imbue their culture with greater solidarity.

However, once the Chinese were allowed to start their own businesses, their ambitions became more apparent. This drive to achieve success is still a characteristic of many Chinese people.

Many Chinese biographies read like incarnations of the American dream: with increasing privatization and a booming market, it seems as if everyone could “make it,” provided they are willing to put in the hard work.

As it turned out, however, that pervasive sense of endless possibility was overly optimistic.

China’s constitution, like most in the modern world, guarantees its citizens freedom of speech and of the press. Yet the constitution has no legal authority over the Party, which has led to massive civil rights abuses. Here are only a few examples.

Writer and civil rights activist Liu Xiaobo, for instance, was arrested simply for launching a civil rights initiative that aimed to collect signatures for Charter 08, a declaration on civil rights signed by thousands of Chinese intellectuals.

Many people know that the Chinese media isn’t exactly free. But few know about a specific department that heads China’s media control system: the Central Publicity Department.

This is partly because the Department operates in the background, thus evading public scrutiny.

The Central Publicity Department gives the Chinese government considerable influence over traditional media, but the internet does not lend itself to such clumsy controls.

Nevertheless, the Party tries to restrict the information and ideas that are exchanged over the internet. Censors block influential international news sources such as the New York Times and Facebook, while the Chinese version of Google, “Baidu,” automatically blocks search results that include politically sensitive words.

With the rise and spread of the internet, ordinary people are turning into media experts who have the tools to identify and expose the Party’s propaganda ploys.

For example, whenever photos have been doctored by Party propagandists, bloggers are likely to notice – and to point it out. They’re sure to comment on images that have been altered in such a way as to make officials look more physically imposing, for example, or make a crowd appear larger.

The juxtaposition between a modern, booming economy and a repressive government is striking. The reality is, however, that the boom and the authoritarian nature of governance are interrelated: the more the economy grows, the more public servants strive (successfully) to get rich through bribery.

Indeed, corruption began to mushroom as soon as the government began allowing private ownership of land and factories, and opened up the distribution of capital to investors in 1992.

Until very recently, the Chinese defined themselves above all else in terms of the groups they belonged to – families, work collectives, etc. We even find this reflected in the lyrics of older popular songs: very rarely would you find the word “I” in place of “we.”

But times have changed. China’s younger generation is very individualistic. The Chinese call the generations born since the 1980s the “Me” generation.

For some Chinese today, a weasel in the house is nothing to fret about. In fact, it’s an omen of imminent wealth! For decades, however, admitting to such a belief would have been ill-advised.

This is because, in the past, Chinese communists actively fought religious belief systems.