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China's Leaders: The New Generation, BY prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, extended
CHENG LI. Lanham: Rowman 8c a helping hand to Mao, through the bor-
Littlefield, 2001,304 pp. $75.00 (paper, der conflicts, and on to the complexities
$22-95)- after the Cold War. Garver shows how
Li takes a quantitative approach to assess India grossly overestimated the value of
the next generation of Chinese leaders, its initial help to China, to the point that
flnding that they will be solid technocrats, Nehru felt he could ignore the territorial
if not the world's best scientiflcally trade-offs that might have resolved border
trained elite. More than 90 percent of problems. India never flally recovered
the Politburo, Central Committee, state from the shock of the Chinese victory
ministers, and provincial leaders are coUege in the 1962 border clash; its diplomatic
graduates; of these, nearly 75 percent are fortunes then steadily sank as it lost status
trained in engineering and the natural within the developing world for its timid
sciences. Li also underscores the dramatic status quo positions and its increasing
shift in leadership from the liberal-arts reliance on Moscow. In contrast, Beijing
graduates of Peking University to the was seen as both a champion of radical
scientists and engineers from Tsinghua change and a truly independent power.
University, often called "China's MIT," Garver documents how the Chinese
who include in their ranks Prime Minister outmaneuvered the Indians in South
Zhu Rongji. This finding leads to a more Asia by forging ties with Pakistan, Burma,
general study of the role of informal and the Himalayan states. Now, the con-
networks of both political principals test wiU be resolved only if India accepts
and their staffs. Li believes that the fourth Chinese hegemony in South Asia or if
generation is also the generation of the China pulls back to leave the subcontinent
Cultural Revolution. That terrible ex- for India to dominate. Garver suspects
perience may have hardened them, he that the former is more likely,
writes, but it also gave them "grassroots
consciousness." He concludes optimisti- Renovating Politics in Contemporary
caUy that an effective leadership will take Vietnam, BY ZACHARY ABUZA.
over and give China a better international Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001,
image. But he is not able to dismiss 271pp. $52.00.
entirely the suspicion that technocrats When Hanoi introduced economic reform
can work for all kinds of regimes, including
in 1986, there were high hopes that Viet-
repressive ones. nam might foUow China in opening up
and achieving spectacular economic
Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in growth. But in 1997 its economy stalled,
the Twentieth Century, BY JOHN W. and the country went back into isolation.
GARVER. Seattle: University of Abuza traces in detail the shifts in Viet-
Washington Press, 2001,450 pp. $50.00. nam's foreign and economic policies,
India and China have long had a contested seeking to explain why it remains so poor
relationship. This thoughtful account despite abundant natural resources and
dissects that connection from the early high literacy rates. The problem, he argues,
days of India's independence, when its comes down to political culture. The