What is interesting about Gilley’s book, however, is that while Jiang has often been portrayed as something of a political and intellectual lightweight, Gilley seems to have gained from his research a grudging respect for him.
What he provides is some much-needed biographical information about a cautious, practical, and not very interesting man whom fate heaved up onto
the world stage to “lead” China.
&151;New York Review of Books
Gilley deserves applause for getting there first and for digging away in unattractive terrain.
Gilley’s Tiger on the Brink helps explain how the podgy, bland, English-speaking Jiang got the top job in the first place and why he has survived for a decade as China’s latest emperor.
—Asahi Shimbun
The author does not just give us a wealth of rare information but is also careful to show how the different stages of Jiang’s life and experience interact.
One of Gilley’s most illuminating contributions is to abstract a “Jiang thought” from a range of themes that Jiang has made his mark on: patriotism, anticorruption, party building, social rejuvenation, redefining the state’s role in the economy, poverty, and income disparities.
In the end, Gilley’s book emerges as a convincing and well-documented study. He makes a major contribution by weaving together a comprehensive account and by putting Jiang’s governing thought and style in the context of his evolution and his personality. Gilley’s approach is balanced, his analysis insightful, and his conclusions reassuring for China’s future and the world.
—Review of Politics
Far Eastern Economic Review reporter Bruce Gilley has done readers a great service in sifting through all the information available to write the first English-language biography of China’s leader.
Along the way, Gilley turns up plenty of new and intriguing details.
Particularly gripping is Gilley’s account of how Mr Jiang handled - not very well - the student democracy protests which rocked Shanghai in 1986 when he was Communist Party secretary.
—South China Morning Post
His is a worthwhile portrait of China’s leader, indeed it is the fullest in English to date.
Gilley’s well-written biography offers important insights on two central questions: Who is the enigmatic Jiang Zemin, and how has Jiang survived at the pinnacle of Chinese power?
—Christian Science Monitor
a highly readable account of modern Chinese politics.
Gilley reinforces the assessment of Jiang as a politically slippery but tenacious survivor.
Jiang likes to present himself as a highly educated idealist in touch with the common man. Gilley shows him instead as an accomplished, calculating performer who has mastered the political routines of Communist Party politics.
—Foreign Affairs
What distinguishes Gilley’s work from many others of its ilk is the fact that while the others come across as little more than grossly inflated feature articles or an incoherent cobbling together of news reports, this one presents the reader with a coherent narrative and a credible, lucid account of its subject. The author gives you a detailed, lively account of Jiang’s personality.
As a straightforward biography, this is a successful, readable book, which weaves into a continuous, clear narrative the events in Jiang’s life and career and facets of his personality.
—The New Straits Times
This is a thoughtful and clear biography of China’s premier by the Hong Kong correspondent for the Far East Economic Review.
A detailed study of the rise to power of China's dominant leader. In 1989, just before the debacle of the Tiananmen Massacre was to occur, Deng Xiaoping picked from seemingly nowhere an owl-faced, bespectacled man to lead China's ruling Communist Party. This man, Jiang Zemin, went on to head not only the party, but China's state and military apparatus as well. Gilley, Hong Kong correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, argues in this fascinating biography that Jiang's rise was no accident, that he was, rather, the right man (and Chinese politics remains a man's club) at the historically right time to lead China. Born in Yangzhou, a city near Shanghai, in 1926, Jiang at 72 is a relatively young man in the aged world of Chinese leadership. He rose steadily if unspectacularly in the party bureaucracy, mostly in Shanghai, and in the byzantine setting of factional strife that was the China of Mao Zedong, he learned the art of political caution, accommodation, and leading by consensus-building. He did not create, as did other leaders, 'a private kingdom' within the party that was at once a power base and also vulnerable to attack. While Jiang had few ardent supporters, he also had few enemies. Once Deng picked him for greatness, he was generally acceptable to all power bases within the party. He has been able to expand his power by slowly winning influence over, rather than attacking and destroying, as in the past, those who oppose him. Jiang is no 'emperor' in the mold of Mao or Deng, nor, Gilley explains, is such an autocratic style of leadership possible any longer in China; while China is certainly not a democracy, certain checks on the authority of even the top leadersdo exist. Within this setting, Jiang has attempted, with success, to combine social stability with rapid economic growth. A well-crafted if overly long work that adds much to our understanding of the politics of modern China.
