I just got back from Beijing from the Olympics and was thrilled to get my copy of Out of Mao's Shadow. (Phil, your signed copy from way back still hasn't arrived...). I hadn't been to Beijing in just under two years (and that was just an overnight stop to say hi to friends) and hadn't really traveled around Beijing in six. The changes were breath-taking.

It was disorienting to go back to Beijing University (Beida), because -- as my classmates and I noted -- the changes were so dramatic that we couldn't even orient ourselves geographically. But the new buildings (and there are so many, everywhere) are architecturally impressive, and not just the Olympic venues. They are daring and playful and surprisingly more modern than anything I've seen built recently in the states.

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Minxin Pei makes a very good point about the nature of political reform in the comments to my first posting. He argues that even though the party-state has successfully resisted change so far, pressure on the system for political liberalization is building. When change comes, he suggests, it may be quick and sudden instead of gradual. Capitalism and economic growth may not have resulted in democracy in China yet, he seems to be saying, but it has unleashed forces that may eventually too great for even the Chinese Communist Party to contain.

I don't disagree with this analysis. I would add, however, that China would probably be better off with a more gradual transition, one that is lead by the party itself. I would also add a cautionary note. I think it's important not to underestimate the ability of this remarkably resilient party-state to adapt and survive. It has been on the brink of collapse many times in its nearly 60-year history, and it has always found a way to make it through. It survived the violent upheavals and disasters of Mao's misrule. It survived the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Most recently, perhaps, it managed to abandon its cover-up of the SARS epidemic just in time to contain the disease.

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Out of Mao's Shadow is a must read. Not for Human Rights Watchers and Congressional hawks who make a career out of hectoring China. But instead for those of us who have lived, worked, and studied in the Middle Kingdom, and have come away from that experience with a far more complicated relationship with the place.

Here's the rub: it's hard not to get the sense sometimes that a huge portion of the Chinese population tacitly accepts the current mode of governance. How else can you explain the recent Pew Global Attitudes Poll that indicated that more than eight-in-ten Chinese are satisfied with their country's overall direction? It would be a grave mistake to simply explain this away as a result of a veil of ignorance blanketing the Chinese people; Philip's book could easily have been a profile of ten ordinary Chinese whose lives, and those of their families, have improved enormously over the past thirty years--through honest means, hard work, and ingenuity.

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Philip Pan's book is an excellent reminder that history is not a simple process of nations snowballing from authoritarianism to democracy. And furthermore, that it is dangerous to consider modern authoritarian regimes as temporary phenomena merely stalled in the inevitable transition towards democracy. Many policymakers in Washington remain afflicted with this notion, having come of age during the Cold War and America's victory in it. If Pan's book helps to debunk the closely guarded myth that economic development invariably leads to political liberalization, it will have already made a vital contribution to the debate about China's future.

But Out of Mao's Shadow also highlights, albeit indirectly, another important insight regarding the prospects for democratization in China: namely, that mass, populist movements can also be impediments to the expansion and expression of individual liberty. Rather than ending in stable, full-blown democracies, democratic transitions are often seized and reversed by political entrepreneurs who fill the societal vacuums that exist under dictatorship. This point is reinforced by Orville Schell's insightful comments regarding the underdetermined goals of Chinese development.

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First, let me recommend Philip Pan's book. It's a really good read that looks behind the blur of the immediate events - that so impresses people who now see it for the first time to raise some very interesting questions about how China's tormented past fits together with its dynamic present and what it all portends for the future.

Second, I thought Pei Minxin got to the heart of the matter in his discussion of reform, namely, what kind of a society is this extraordinary, dynamic country going to become?

Of course, nobody, not even so-called "China experts" can deign to answer that question definitively, because it is not answerable. And the reason why it is so difficult to foresee China's future is that, despite all its quite amazing dynamism, it is in perpetually in a state of high-speed transition between two utterly dissimilar traditions and systems: a model adopted during the time of Stalinism from the USSR in the 1950s and... Well, that's just the question. What?

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First of all, I'd like to thank Lila Shapiro and the folks at TPM for organizing what I hope will be a lively and substantive discussion of Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China. I also want to apologize right away for starting the chat behind schedule. As Lila mentioned, I'm moving to Moscow this week, earlier than expected because of the situation in Georgia. The past few days have been a blur of book events, Russian studies and packing. But I'm excited to be finishing the book tour here on TPM, and I think it will be fun to post my final observations on China later this week from my new home in Moscow.

For more than seven years, from the end of 2000 to the beginning of 2008, I made my home in Beijing, trying to understand China and explain it to readers of the Washington Post. This book is the culmination of those years of reporting, and I'm pleased I was able to finish it and get it into bookstores in time to join the public conversation about China that has unfolded around the Olympic Games. For links to interviews with me -- as well as reviews of the book -- please visit its website. While promoting the book over the past few weeks, I have tried to emphasize two of its major themes:

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