September 18, 2014
John Osburg
Will Chinese economic development ultimately lead to political development? In Age of Ambition, the journalist Evan Osnos thinks he has found the missing link: the emergence in Chinese society of a search for dignity. Justin Vogt, deputy managing editor of Foreign Affairs, recently sat down with Osnos to discuss Chinese spirituality, Beijing’s censorship of journalists, and President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign. A transcript is available below. For more books coverage, follow us on Twitter @FA_books and subscribe to our monthly Books and Reviews newsletter.
VOGT: Hi, welcome to Foreign Affairs Focus on Books. I’m Justin Vogt, books editor here at the magazine. I’m joined today by Evan Osnos, a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and the author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China. Evan, thanks so much for joining us today
OSNOS: Thanks for having me.
VOGT: You spent about eight years, from 2005 until 2013, living and reporting on China for The New Yorker and The Chicago Tribune. You’ve now written this terrific book about ways in which China is quickly changing and transforming. Now you’re back in the United States. You’re based in Washington. What’s the single most important thing that official Washington misunderstands, or misperceives, or just plain doesn’t know about contemporary China?
OSNOS: I think there’s a tendency, and it’s an understandable tendency, to imagine that China makes decisions out of a grand strategy. The reality is that I think China today is operating, most of all, based on its domestic needs. And those are very specific, and they act as both a motivator and then I also think a hedge against more adventurous actions abroad.