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Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos is a 2014 non-fiction book exploring China's rapid transformation into an economic superpower, focusing on the tension between individual aspirations and authoritarian control. Based on eight years of reporting for The New Yorker, Osnos highlights how the chase for money, truth, and faith shapes modern Chinese life.



I took me a little while to get into this one, but that’s pretty typical for me when starting a new read.  The thing that is different about this one is that it’s written and presented anecdotally through the stories of a number of different individuals acquainted with Osnos. 

And I am not really used to a book on contemporary issues that is presented in that kind of style. 

Regardless, each of the individual’s stories represents something of the paradigm shift in China as the country moved beyond the period of Maoist totalitarianism towards an authoritarian, but mostly free market economy. For some there was immediate success, and for others frustration and struggle.

Whether it was a blind lawyer in the countryside, a media executive in the city, a nationalist blogger, or even an English language instruction entrepreneur, each story reflected the struggle that results between growing freedom, on one hand, and continued attempts by the state to maintain power on the other.

Everyone that we meet in Age of Ambition is looking for their place in the powerful China emerging from the troubles of the past, but struggling with extreme inequality, rampant corruption, and opaque rules on what’s acceptable. I think we can all empathize with the desire to leave a meaningful life within clear social rules.   

One thing that I found interesting about this book, and this may not apply to everyone, is that living in Canada, we, or at least I, get the sense of China as this powerful monolith, always pushing, always getting its way.  Canada is often on the receiving end of this pushing, or bullying, if you will. And it was interesting to see how similar the diverse views of this subset of new Chinese were to the views one might expect that Canadians would have. 

I really got the sense that maybe the people aren’t that far away from us and China has the potential to be a real positive player in the world. It seems that its government is really just holding it back at this point.  It will be interesting to see if a rigid, authoritarian bureaucracy can survive such a dynamic economic experiment.  

I know this book is over 10 years old now, but I still think that it's the kind of book anyone interested in contemporary issues or looking to understand more about modern China should check out. 


Publication date: 2015 | Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux   | Page Count: 416


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