The China Report
Srikanth Kondapalli
SMOKE AND MIRRORS: AN EXPERIENCE OF CHINA by Pallavi Aiyar Fourth State, an Imprint of HarperCollins, 2008, 274 pp., 395
October 2008, volume 32, No 10

Reporting from China has always been a fascinating experience. Nevertheless, much as in ‘area studies’, western- and-ethno-centrism and value-judgements dominate analyses by foreigners on China. The travails of language barriers and cultural differences of a foreigner to a homogeneous society like China makes it all the more challenging for anyone to interview, interact and analyse the Chinese reality. This has been the case with the Christian missionaries who ventured into China in the 18th and 19th centuries to the socially committed journalists and observers such as Edgar Snow, William Hinton, Jack Belden, and Israel Epstein in the 20th century. The Cold War period also produced several images of China, specifically in the western press in what Felix Green’s eye-opening Curtain of Ignorance revealed of systematic obfuscation of whatever Chinese in China. Opening up of China for foreign economic competition in the Special Economic Zones from 1980s also provided opportunities for a new breed of reporters and others to venture deeper into several layers of Chinese consciousness.

Pallavi Aiyar belongs to the latest generation—with the difference that in the book under review she makes an attempt to compare China with India in all possible fields of observation.

Unlike the ‘embedded’ varieties who tend to question the Communist state in China, Aiyar ventures out cautiously, with the narrative mostly in terms of reflecting on the societal forms. The most distinguishing aspect of her reporting from China, is her ability to connect events in China with those in India. The outcome, then, is a unique experiment in comparison—often commonsensical—between China and India in almost all walks of life.

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