The Bear and the Dragon
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The Bear and the Dragon is a political thriller novel by Tom Clancy featuring Jack Ryan. It was published in 2000.
In the book Jack Ryan is President of the United States. After Russia discovers oil fields the size of the Persian Gulf in Siberia and gold deposits just as big, it looks as if the struggling Russian economy is on the road to recovery.
After a roving CNN news team captures the murder of the Papal Nuncio to Beijing, Renato Cardinal di Milo, and a Chinese religious minister in China, Yu Fa An, as they stop Chinese authorities from performing a forced late-term abortion on a member of Yu's congregation, the world boycotts trade with the PRC. With its economy struggling due to recent military expansions, the China decides to hasten its planned invasion of Siberia to access the abundant newly discovered oil and gold fields, attempting to murder the Russian President and his top ranking advisor in the process.
In an attempt to dissuade China from invading Russia, Ryan persuades NATO to admit Russia, and personally promises assistance to Russia's President Grushavoy. China invades anyway. Russia opposes this and eventually wins through help from the United States Army, Air Force and NATO allies, in the process completely annihilating two Chinese Shock-Army formations and severely damaging two others. The U.S. Navy, in an attack on the Chinese mainland coastal defenses, destroys much of the Chinese navy's ageing fleet while it lies in port. Ryan decides to broadcast CNN's coverage of the war, plus direct feeds from U.S. reconnaissance drones, over a CIA Web site to counter propaganda that is being spread by the Chinese government about the situation of the war; this decision becomes important later on as events develop.
As the war turns against China, Beijing's increasingly desperate leaders decide to ready their ICBMs for a potential launch. A joint NATO-Russian special operations force, led on the NATO side by John Clark, is dispatched to destroy the ICBMs. The force destroys all but one of the missiles; the remaining one being targeted at Washington. Ryan's family is evacuated, but he decides at the last minute to stay behind on board a Navy ship docked in Washington that has an experimental anti-missile system. Ryan watches as the ship successfully destroys the ICBM just before it was set to explode over Washington.
Ryan then decides to broadcast CNN's coverage of the near-destruction of Washington on the same CIA Web site. By this time, several thousand Chinese citizens have been following the war on this site. Late at night, a group of students who have become enraged over the Chinese leadership's handling of the war after watching the CIA site march through Tiananmen Square and successfully invade a Politburo meeting, leading to the fall of the government. A reformist Politburo member, Fang Gan takes over and arrests the men behind the invasion, Premier Xu Kun Piao, Minister Zhang Han San, and Marshal Luo Cong. Fang also orders an immediate withdrawal of Chinese forces from Siberia, and then in open discussion with student leaders starts China's transition to democracy.
Criticisms of The Bear and The Dragon
Template:Cleanup-date The Bear and the Dragon, for a number of reasons, was one of Clancy's most poorly received novels by critics to date. The extensive passages of politics and the length of the book did not appeal to some of Clancy's traditional readers. The small number of sex scenes alienated some Clancy readers, who were used to quick action. Some saw an intense amount of right wing influence in the novel including condemnation of abortion, a flat tax, and a supposed negative portrayal of liberals. Asian American groups were outraged and were quick to condemn the novel because of its supposed appeal to racism, extreme ignorance, and the traditional fear of the yellow peril. The Chinese are referred to by some characters as "Chinks", "Joe Chink", "John Chinaman", "yellow barbarians", "slant-eyed fucks", "little bastards", "Klinongs", "heathens", "godless pagans", "agents of Satan", "the enemies of God" and "conscienceless motherfuckers".
Also, another major criticism raised by military enthusiasts is the sheer amount of inaccuracies in the portrayal of the People's Liberation Army which includes this not exhausted list:
-The lack of any UAV's possessed by the PLA (in book) where in fact (in real life) they have fielded them since 1994 (book was published in 1998).
-That the entire USAF appears to have experienced only 5 aerial casualties in the entire conflict.
-Also the PLA appeared to have had no AWAAC's which in reality had possessed them since the 1990's.
However, some argued that Clancy was being cynical of cultural attitudes worldwide, stating that each racial group has racist tendencies of some level toward others and that at the core level we are all the same and deserve the same rights to freedom of expression, free speech, right to life and choice of religion. Overall, while the novel received low praise from critics, the novel was held in high aclaim by readers worldwide, toping the New York Time's Worldwide Bestseller list.
Popular References
- Over several episodes in the fourth season of the British sitcom My Family, the main character Ben Harper reads The Bear and the Dragon, and eventually starts a book club exclusively discussing that book.
External links
- Australian criticism of the novel
- Review of the novel
- The Bear and the Dragon at: Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com
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