A review by moralalec
The Story of China: The Epic History of a World Power from the Middle Kingdom to Mao and the China Dream by Michael Wood

2.0

Oh goodness, where to begin. I'll start with the good, I really appreciated the detail that Michael Wood went through to detail the multi-thousand year story of China and her various transformations through all her different empires. Above all what I loved most was his focusing on individuals throughout this story, such as the poet Li Qingzhao and the classic author Cao Xueqin. I've been exposed to so much Chinese thought, literature, and poetry because of my reading of this book and for that I would give this book a 5 star review. It'll be a source of reference for me on those Chinese figures for years and years to come. Now for the bad. I got rumblings of Michael Woods' orientalist and anti-communism approach early, but it truly began to sink in as his writings on the modern era approached and came into full swing during the 20th century period of writings. Of course, I expected this anti-communist narrative from a liberal capitalist of his nature, but I didn't expect the biases he displayed to be so... well dishonest. Michael not only misquotes Mao numerous times, he even goes as far as to claim he held views that were antithetical to everything he said or did. Now this doesn't even begin to touch on the dishonest ways in which he attempts to criticize him by say claiming Mao caused an entire famine, if Mao could cause famine then boy have I been mistaken about the power of humans. But he also continues to look at the West through very close-minded, imperialist eyes claiming that the "democracy" and "freedoms" of the West could save China without realizing how little little democracy and freedom the West (and the rest of the world due to the oppressive power of The West) actually has. It's honestly sickening how much of a capitalist (and by extension imperialist) apologist this guy is. Not to mention his love for discrediting anything that could cast the Chinese communist party in a good light and readiness to accept anything that would disparage it. Obviously, the Chinese communist party (which isn't even communist, heck it really only has a few socialist threads) is a very complicated party that has done a lot for the people of China and made its fair share of grave errors too. But I don't subscribe to this notion that a Western capitalist model would've helped China or that the CCP is an abhorrent totalitarian government, in fact I'd venture to say that compared to every other major world power China is by far the best example of what a country should look like and how it should run.