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Evan Osnos On China's 'Age Of Ambition'

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The US accuses China’s military of industrial espionage. We’ll talk with the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos – longtime Beijing correspondent – about China’s “Age of Ambition.”

Russia's President Vladimir Putin, centre right, and China's President Xi Jinping, centre left, walk to open joint naval exercises, in Shanghai, China, Tuesday, May 20, 2014. (AP)
Russia's President Vladimir Putin, center right, and China's President Xi Jinping, center left, walk to open joint naval exercises, in Shanghai, China, Tuesday, May 20, 2014. (AP)

Plenty of news out of still-rising China lately.  Chinese leaders doing deals with Vladimir Putin as Putin defies the West.  Chinese sea power pushing an oil rig into waters claimed by Vietnam.  Chinese military on FBI wanted posters for hacking American companies’ intellectual property.  China’s unprecedented, light speed rise to wealth and growing power has the whole world’s attention.  New Yorker writer Evan Osnos is just back from eight years in China and out with a deep analysis of Chinese dreams and ambitions.  This hour On Point:  Deep China, with the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos.
-- Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Evan Osnos, staff writer at the New Yorker. Author of the new book "Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China." (@eosnos)

From Tom's Reading List

Reuters: China confronts U.S. envoy over cyber-spying accusations -- "It was the first criminal hacking charge that the United States has filed against specific foreign officials, and follows a steady increase in public criticism and private confrontation, including at a summit last year between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping."

The Wall Street Journal: Book Review: 'Age of Ambition' by Evan Osnos -- "If the book has a focus, it's on the country's enterprising youth and the extraordinary freedoms that the Internet has provided in a country where the Party, having opened up the economy and turned it into the world's second biggest, still seeks to control the minds of China's 1.3 billion inhabitants. The aim of China's present rulers, apart from enriching themselves and their families, is to create a 'harmonious society'—a nation without differences."

POLITICO Magazine: Five Myths About China (That I’m Sorry I Helped Spread) -- "Is China the world’s next great power or a political antique or an economic powder keg? The answer: Yes. China is so vast and contradictory – home to one-fifth of humanity, with an income gap wider than that between New York and Ghana — that we are tempted to simplify it by resorting to the archetypes that capture one side or another. Writing in China from 2005 to 2013, I’ve certainly done it."

Read An Excerpt From "Age Of Ambition" By Evan Osnos

This program aired on May 21, 2014.

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