There is a tone to Chinese official propaganda that is worthy of Professor Pangloss and his irrefutable case that “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”. Beijing’s favoured phrases, such as “win-win cooperation” and “community of common destiny for all mankind”, are designed to evoke an image of China as the fountainhead of conflict-free benevolence. A similar if much more sophisticated feeling runs through Keyu Jin’s book.
Jin teaches economics at the LSE in London. She is the Harvard-educated daughter of a former deputy minister of finance who now heads up China’s first multilateral development bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. As such, she is well placed to compare key features of western and Chinese economic systems, as she does to good effect in this volume. She is perhaps less well placed – or less eager – to deal with politically contentious questions.
