<p>THE NEW CHINESE EMPIRE And What It Means for the United States.</p>
<p>If you want to understand why China's government has engaged in a massive cover-up of the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic, read Ross Terrill's The New Chinese Empire. The book, of course, was in the can long before SARS erupted, presenting Beijing's leaders with their worst crisis since the 1989 Tiananmen massacre and its aftermath. But the pattern of paternalistic posturing, blatant lying, and dismissive slapping-down of anyone who questions official truth follows a pattern common in China for two millenniums. It is just this imperial attitude and its relation to the range of current problems that Terrill analyzes so cogently.</p>