Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 January 2000 Issue No. 464
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Monthly supplement The barber of Baghdad Ard Al-Sawad (Land of Darkness), a novel in three volumes, Abdel-Rahman Mounif, Beirut and Casablanca: Al-Mou'assassa Al-Arabiya Lildirasta wal-Nashr (Beirut), Al-Markaz Al-Thaqafi Al-Arabi Lil-Nashr wal-Tawzi (Casablanca) 1999. Fiction and reality Abdel-Rahman Mounif Chinese monuments and miracles Al-Seen: Mo'jizat Nihayat Al-Qarn Al-Ishreen (China: Miracle of the End of the 20th Century ), Ibrahim Nafie, Cairo: Al-Ahram Centre for Translation and Publishing 1999. pp200 Deep roots, shallow soil Landmarks in the History of the Communist Party of the Sudan in the half century 1946 - 1996, Mohamed Said al-Qaddal, Beirut: Dar Al-Farabi, 1999. pp310 Cinematic maladies Al-Cinema Al-Arabiya Al-Mo'assira (Contemporary Arab Cinema),Samir Farid, Cairo: The Supreme Council for Culture publications,1998. pp260 Horses in the desert night Night & Horses & the Desert, An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature, Robert Irwin, London: Allen Lane, the Penguin Press. pp462 Heritage in the balance The Arabic Literary Heritage: the Development of its Genres and Criticism, Roger Allen, Cambridge University Press, 1998. pp437 Summer torments Azhar al-Shams (Flowers of the Sun),Youssef Rakha, Cairo: Sharqiat Publishing House, 1999. pp143 Hill of evil counsel Tal Al-Hawa ,Youssef Abu Raya, Cairo: Al-Hilal Novels, 1999. pp146 Century, conceived and edited by Bruce Bernard, London: Phaidon Press, 1999. pp1120 --see caption-- To the editor At a glance A shorthand guide to the month compiled by Mahmoud El-Wardani * Al-Faylaq (The Corps), Amin Ezzeddin, Cairo: Fustat Publishing House, 1999. pp174 * Ana Baqqa wa Adel Hammouda (Adel Hammouda and Me), Ahmed Fouad Negm, Cairo: Zeinab Publishing House, 2000. pp108 * Jamal Eddin Al-Afghani, El-Sayed Youssef,Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organisation, 1999. pp255 * Masirat Hayati Hatta 1964 (The Course of My Life to 1964), Mohamed Youssef El-Guindi, Cairo: Organisation for Cultural Palaces, 1999. pp208 * Al-Mohammashoun wa Al-Siyasa fi Misr (The Marginalised and Politics in Egypt), Amani Massoud El-Heddini, Cairo: Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, 1999. pp302 * Al-Kotob: Wughat Nazar (Books: Viewpoints), monthly magazine, issue no. 12, January 2000, Cairo: The Egyptian Company for Arab and International Publication * Al-Hilal, monthly magazine, January 1999, Cairo: Al-Hilal Publishing House * Al-Arabi, monthly magazine, issue no. 494, January 2000, Kuwait: Ministry of Information * Sotour (Lines), monthly magazine, issue no. 39, December 1999, Cairo: Sotour Publications * Al-Osour Al-Jadida (New Eras), monthly magazine, issue no. 3, 2000, Cairo: Sinai Publishing House * Adab wa Naqd (Literature and Criticism), monthly literary magazine, issue no. 172, December 1999, Cairo: Progressive Nationalist Unionist Party publications To see other book supplements go to the ARCHIVES index.    Illustrations courtesy of International Commitee of the Red Cross "Folk drawings and tales", Cairo, 1996

Al-Seen: Mo'jizat Nihayat Al-Qarn Al-Ishreen (China: Miracle of the End of the 20th Century ), Ibrahim Nafie, Cairo: Al-Ahram Centre for Translation and Publishing 1999. pp200

Chinese monuments and miracles

It is tempting for the politicians of smaller nations to leave a monument behind them. Not so in China. What monument would not be dwarfed by the Great Wall, the only man-made structure visible from the moon? However, if China's Communist rulers have left monuments behind them, then these are mental ones, and they are all the stronger for being enshrined in the minds of China's teeming millions. No physical monument could ever communicate the miracle of Mao Zedong's Long March or the awe-inspiring social engineering of the country's Cultural Revolution. Similarly, no physical monument could ever fittingly remember Deng Xiaoping's ideological volte-face from command to socialist-market economy. The scale of these events seems too large. Ibrahim Nafie's China: Miracle of the End of the 20th Century eloquently captures something of the greatness of China. What wouldn't a newspaperman give, after all, to get a taste of China? One thing that comes across more strongly than anything else in these pages is the author's fascination with China and with all aspects of its multifaceted society.

Given the vast body of literature about China, albeit in languages other than Arabic, to write a new book about the country that contains fresh insight is quite a challenge. Nafie, however, has managed to do so, and the book's real importance lies in the fact that it is designed specifically for the Arab reader. It explains China from a non-Western perspective, drawing fascinating parallels between Chinese experience and that of the rest of the developing world, particularly with regard to the difficult question of 'catching up' with the West. Nafie's book shows how China's rulers, in conjunction with the country's blossoming bourgeois class, are working hard to give to the country its rightful place among nations. Sometime this century the country will have the world's largest economy. With a population of 1.2 billion, an enviable dynamism and vast natural resources, China will surely supersede the United States as the world's pre-eminent power. The only question is when. Such issues rightly fascinate Nafie.

Egypt has traditionally enjoyed exceptionally warm relations with China, and has avoided the kinds of conflict that have marked Chinese-Western relations, from episodes of Western imperialism in the region, which gave rise to the Boxer Rebellion and to the Opium Wars in the past, to the trade wars and disagreements over human rights of today. Nevertheless it seems true to say that, unpleasant economic rivalry and cultural difference aside, people in the West have a greater insight into the inner workings of China than do those of the Middle East. It is to be hoped, therefore, that Nafie's book on China will lead to a greater degree of awareness of the culture and the lives of the Chinese people in Egypt and in the Arab world. It is high time, after all, that China, that vast and critically influential nation, received the proper attention it is due in this part of the world.

Nafie makes it clear that his observations on China are made from what he terms a "non-Western perspective," while retaining the sharp eye of the best traditions of journalism, Western or otherwise. He is a man of the East, and understands that he is also writing about the East. For Nafie, the common experiences that the Middle East and the Far East share outweigh the differences between them. At a time when Europe was backward and undeveloped in world-historical terms, the Egyptians and the Chinese were blazing the path of civilisation, he explains. If sociologists are to be believed, the presence of a long and sophisticated civilisation behind a given culture is a kind of 'language' spoken only by those who share it. In this sense, then, Egyptians and Chinese might be thought to have a common language, and one which stretches back over millennia to the present day.

Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China in 1949, and since then the country has changed beyond recognition. However a major attraction of the country for Nafie remains the fact that in many ways China, like Egypt, is an intensely spiritual country. Mao, for example, rarely spent more than four months at a time in Beijing, choosing instead periodically to withdraw from mundane political matters in search of spiritual regeneration, and no one questioned these frequent retreats or bothered him with day-to-day aspects of government and administration during his regular escapes to remote provincial sanctuaries. It is, in fact, for this reason (among others) that Chinese Marxism, Nafie argues, has had its specifically "Chinese" quality, radically different from that which was in place in the former Soviet Union for example.

Nafie is especially good on the history of bilateral relations between China and Egypt, and fittingly so, given his stated emphases. China needed Egypt during much of the Cold War, for example, since for much of that time China, like Egypt, suffered from the results of American conspiracy, with matters reaching a head during the Vietnam War. This marked the high-water mark of American intervention in South-East Asia, though its result led to the withdrawal of American forces from the region and to the weakening of US political and military hegemony there. The late Egyptian president Gamal Abdel-Nasser, though officially a close ally of the former Soviet Union, was also, like most other Asian and African leaders at the time, an instinctive friend of Beijing's. Cairo was then the capital of the so-called Third World, and China courted Nasser's Egypt.

This history was brought right up to date with President Hosni Mubarak's path-breaking visit to China last year, which re-emphasised many of the old ties. Nafie accompanied Mubarak on that trip, and it is obvious from the way he writes in the present book that he was tremendously impressed.

So when will China catch up with the West? The determining factor here is, of course, the country's recent accession to the World Trade Organisation, foreshadowed by its milestone agreement with the US on the terms of WTO entry. Already Chinese manufacturers are forming alliances with foreign companies, and China today exports goods worth over US$100 billion, the Chinese economy having displaced the Japanese as the world's second largest after that of the United States. Nafie is particularly fascinated by the details and explanation of this Chinese economic miracle, though he also examines the country's social problems and the kind of dislocations that such rapid economic growth engenders. Globalisation in particular is having significant effects on Chinese society, and Nafie's book accordingly looks at a wide range of topics from politics to economics, and from culture to social ills.

Chapter One examines poverty and corruption in contemporary China, Nafie explaining how the Chinese authorities are fighting both. While he notes that the standard of living in China has improved tremendously over the past two decades, the scale of the problems is still gigantic. Over the next three chapters, Nafie explores the impact of globalisation on Chinese society in more depth, looking at the delicate question of the dissidents and at the Chinese opposition.

China, however, has shown itself to be impervious to external pressure, whether concerning Wei Jingsheng , the most famous Chinese dissident, or concerning the spiritual leader of Tibet, the exiled Dalai Lama; Beijing is unwilling to budge from the direction that its has taken and has refused to follow Western dictates. The red-carpet treatment accorded Chinese President Jiang Zemin in Western capitals does not reflect the fact that the People's Republic has been severely criticised for its poor human-rights record. Nafie believes, however, that the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989 will not be repeated, public opinion and the rule of law in China having come a long way since. He says, in fact, that we need to look beyond convenient labels such as democracy, or the lack of it, if we are properly to understand modern China.

Globalisation has also had directly economic effects on the country, with many in China's Communist leadership abhorring the country's abrupt opening to the market and its extensive privatisation programme, which has been marked by extensive corruption. However it nevertheless remains true that while the Asia-Pacific region is still reeling from the aftershocks of the Asian financial crisis which swept through the region like an earthquake a year or so ago, the Chinese economy stands on much firmer ground and is insulated from such regional troubles. China's foreign exchange reserves rose by US$9.72 billion in 1999 to $154.67 billion at the end of December, in a sign that any economic pressures on Beijing have eased.

Policy makers in Beijing have other problems to contend with apart from economic ones. In Chapter Five of his book, for example, Nafie looks at the condition of contemporary Chinese women and is astonished to learn that a recent survey showed that 21 per cent of Beijing's women are subject to domestic violence. China's women, he writes, want a break with the past, which they see as the source of much of their continuing secondary status, but this break seems to be yet to come.

In Chapter Seven the author turns explicitly to the question of the country's future. While most of the literature on China focuses on the economic aspects of the country, Nafie believes that on the social and political fronts too there are good grounds for optimism. Preparations for the Chinese Communist Party's 16th Congress in 2002 and the following year's session of the National People's Congress when President Jiang Zemin, 73, will be constitutionally obliged to step down as head of state, will be very interesting times, he says.

Finally in Chapter Eight Nafie explores the world of China's sometimes maligned 20-million strong Muslim minority. What, he asks, do this vast country's 23,000 mosques represent? What are the specificities of "Chinese" Islam? China's Muslims have come a long way from the days of the Cultural Revolution, when all religion was systematically suppressed. Like all other Chinese, Nafie predicts a brighter future for them in the 21st century.

Reviewed by Gamal Nkrumah

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