Harvard University, an M.A. in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts University, and B.S. in Psychology from Duke University. Prior to his academic career, he worked as a consultant, journalist, and teacher in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Washington, D.C.
Kennedy applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Rebellious Follower: China's Search for Science, Technology, and Innovation, and shared the following:
Page 99 may be found in the middle of Chapter 5, “The Balancing Act.” The chapter explores how China’s reformist leaders started experimenting with a more balanced approach to science and technology in the 1980s, chipping away at state planning and allowing more room societal initiative. Page 99 notes how challenging and problematic these changes were. “While the creation of a foundation system created new opportunities for scientists,” it notes, “the liberalization of prices and salary disparities made careers in basic science unappealing.” While small startup firms emerged, “the private sector was still nascent and remained vulnerable to discrimination.” The program to create China’s own technology clusters along the lines of Silicon Valley “suffered from considerable ‘mission drift’ over time.” The passage concludes by putting these challenges in perspective: “expanding society-led S&T in a Leninist political system accustomed to central planning was bound to be fraught.” More encouragingly, it adds that it was “striking how much change China’s leaders introduced in a relatively short period of time.”Learn more about Rebellious Follower at the Oxford University Press website.
Overall, the Page 99 Test works rather well for Rebellious Follower. Readers opening the book to this page would quickly understand that the book is a deep dive into how China’s policies toward science, technology, and innovation have evolved over time. In fact, page 99 highlights a number of key changes at an important moment. Readers would also perceive that the book is concerned both with China’s changing approach and with the challenges and contradictions these changes have wrought.
One page can only say so much, of course, and readers would need to start with Chapter 1 to appreciate the full scope of the book and its argument. The story really starts in the 19th century, when imperialist incursions brought the concept of science to China in the first place. Debates over how to respond have animated Chinese policymaking ever since. In the 1950s, China embraced state-led science planning, inspired by the Soviet Union, but Chairman Mao Zedong soon tired of this approach. In the 1960s, therefore, Mao’s Cultural Revolution touted “mass science” as the path to salvation – a remarkable challenge to more traditional elitist conceptions of what science was. Following Mao’s death, a more elitist approach returned, but departures from state-led planning soon followed. In the 1990s, China began to embrace not only science and technology, but also innovation, and the country’s “innovation system” became a new focal point for policymaking. In the 21st century, China’s leaders have developed an “innovation system with Chinese characteristics,” one in which a resurgent party-state plays a critical guiding role.
Throughout this winding history, Chinese leaders have shown a deep and abiding interest in foreign ideas about how science, technology, and innovation work. Yet they have also repeatedly challenged these ideas, either resisting them or adapting them as they have sought to reconcile imported belief systems with local ideologies. Simply put, China’s leaders have followed foreign ideas closely, but they have been remarkably rebellious followers.
--Marshal Zeringue
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