This audacious and illuminating memoir by Richard Baum, a senior China scholar and sometime policy advisor, reflects on forty years of learning about and interacting with the People’s Republic of China, from the height of Maoism during the author’s UC Berkeley student days in the volatile 1960s through globalization. Anecdotes from Baum’s professional life illustrate the alternately peculiar, frustrating, fascinating, and risky activity of China watching — the process by which outsiders gather and decipher official and unofficial information to figure out what’s really going on behind China’s veil of political secrecy and propaganda. Baum writes entertainingly, telling his narrative with witty stories about people, places, and eras.

China Watcher will appeal to scholars and followers of international events who lived through the era of profound political and academic change described in the book, as well as to younger, post-Mao generations, who will enjoy its descriptions of the personalities and political forces that shaped the modern field of China studies.

"Richard Baum's China Watcher offers us a distinctive view into China and the field of China watching . . . Many in the profession will find his journey familiar, yet even professionals will find the book engaging because he so openly and candidly shines a light on what it has meant to be a China hand over the past 40 years."

"This engaging, readable volume is a refreshing contrast to the tomes most China scholars produce."

"In his vivacious memoir China Watcher, leading American Sinologist Richard Baum recalls a time when just getting your hands on an internal Party document was enough to launch a career…."

"One thing that makes this book valuable is that is shows how, over the course of Baum's career, not only has China itself changed profoundly but so have the methods scholars use to make sense of it."

"What Baum does excellently in China Watcher is supply a wide-angle lens treatment to the major events of the past four decades, the sort of things only a person who was actually on the ground at the time can write about credibly. Imagine getting the fly-on-the-wall play-by-play half-an-hour before the recording of the Zapruder film, and you'll readily realize what I mean."

"Being a smart-aleck got him in trouble in academic circles at times, but it has served his memoir well. It is rare to find a serious scholar who is able to write about his life's work with such levity. We witness not just his knowledge (and ours) about China grow, but also watch him coming of age."

"One suspects that many a stodgy China hand will publicly distain Baum's candid, colourful— often hilarious— retrospective. But they will clandestinely read this expose under the covers."

"Baum charts the breathtaking changes of the past decades."

"China Watcher offers the rare opportunity to learn this history as author Richard Baum did— from the front row…. It is rare to find a serious scholar who is able to write about his life's work with such levity. We witness not just his knowledge (and our) about China grow, but also watch him coming of age…. His measured optimism for the country and its relations with the rest of the world are all the more convincing for his exciting narrative about a long career of China watching."

"A superb, engaging memoir."

"In this fine memoir professor Richard Baum reminds us of many events, truths, themes and insanities over his four decades of visiting, studying and writing about China as an exceptionally well-traveled academic. He writes nicely, though not so slickly that you are made to wonder why he isn't struggling harder to understand China (he believes understanding China is a terrifying constant struggle, even for so-called experts), and he thinks deeply, though without the unnecessary density common to academic studies that have very little to say and— tragically— a whole of space in which to say it….the book is a wonderful way to get a handle on the current situation between China and the United States without losing your mind or your composure, or falling asleep."

Richard Baum was distinguished professor of political science at UCLA and director emeritus of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies.