Read Kuhn To Figure Out The Real China – Book Review



"Xi Jinping's New-Era China: The Inside Story," by Robert Lawrence Kuhn


September 6, 2026

By Subir Bhaumik

Key Takeaways:

The article presents Robert Lawrence Kuhn as a middle path on China: neither the Western stereotype of a one-dimensional authoritarian state nor an uncritical admirer of China’s speed and tech rise. That stance, it argues, is useful for the West and for countries such as India that must treat China as competitor, challenger, and possible partner.

Kuhn is offered as an unusually well-placed guide. He has worked in China since a 1988 invitation from Song Jian, visited more than 100 cities, written nearly 30 China books (notably How China’s Leaders Think, 2009), and received China’s Reform Friendship Medal in 2018. Xi Jinping’s New-Era China: The Inside Story (364 pages, Pentagon Press in India) covers Xi’s leadership from 2012 onward.

The review’s core claim is “context, not hagiography.” Kuhn treats “national rejuvenation” and the “Chinese Dream” as strategy, not slogans, while listing about 200 accusations against China over 14 pages in “Personal Perspective”—then declining both prosecution and defense so readers can see a more complex country than the charge sheet alone implies.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn is a western Sinologist with a difference. He is neither the stereotype that sees China as a ruthless authoritarian state ruled by a Communist party suppressing free speech and right of association. Nor is the wide-eyed admirer of a China overtaking US in new technologies or being able to construct a railway station in just nine hours.

The biggest challenge for the West or rising democracies like India in this century is to get a proper understanding of China, not only because it is a competitor, a challenger or a threat but also because it can be a potential partner to secure and stabilize a new world order. Without a proper understanding of China and its many shades, some contradictory, no country can handle it appropriately.

That is exactly where it becomes necessary to read up and refer, whenever necessary, Kuhn latest book “Xi Jinping’s New-Era China : The Inside Story.”

In fact, Kuhn is the right man to present the ‘Inside Story’. He has stayed and worked in China, interacted with thousands of Chinese from leaders to commoners, visited more than 100 Chinese cities, and written nearly thirty books on China.

His China journey started in 1988, when he was invited by Dr Song Jian, Chairman of China’s State Science and Technology Committee to “advise the Chinese science and technology sector in its first fledgling efforts to the market economy.” Of his previous books, the most significant is his “How China’s Leaders Think” published in 2009. In 2018, Kuhn was awarded “China Reform Friendship Medal” on the 40th anniversary of China’s Opening Up.

Kuhn ‘ Inside Story’ of new-era China is a perfect balance between objectivity and context on the one hand and insider perspective on the other. This 364-page book, published in India by Pentagon Press, covers the extraordinary period of Xi Jinping’s leadership from 2012 to now as the Chinese president emerged as the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. Kuhn does not treat Xi’s “National Rejuvenation” or the “Chinese Dream” as mere political slogans but goes deep to explore the vision and the strategy and the context behind them.

Kuhn is keen to prove the ‘Inside Story’ is no hagiography.

In the chapter “Personal Perspective”, he lists 200 accusations over 14 pages against China, which he says “cannot be igmored.”

“I will neither prosecute these charges nor conduct China’s defence… my purpose is more limited, and I hope more helpful. I want to give feel and flavour of a complex, variegated China that is richer, more interesting and more challenging, and more relevant than what this collection of accusations might superficially suggest,” Kuhn succintly observes.

That exactly seems to sum up the focus of the book and that precisely helps in understanding the China of today in the right perspective.


About Subir Bhaumik
Subir Bhaumik is a former BBC and Reuters correspondent and author of books on South Asian conflicts.
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