“It’s time to stop hoping for China’s failure and start…adapting to its success,” wrote Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek (10/26/09). Here are the best out of a slew of books on the subject. [Click on the book images for details.]

The Future of Chinese Capitalism
By Gordon Redding and Michael A. Witt
Oxford University Press, 2008, 275 pages
$60 hardcover, $48 Kindle

Redding and Witt present a comprehensive exploration of China’s economic system, how that system is evolving, and how it might change over the next couple of decades. They leave no doubt that China is re-emerging to its historical position of eminence in the world economy.

Redding is director of the Euro-Asia and Comparative Research Centre at INSEAD, and former director of the business school at the University of Hong Kong. Witt teaches international business at INSEAD and is a researcher at Harvard’s Reischauer Institute.

“Though a weighty academic work, the book is written in a quite reader-friendly style that researchers, college students, and even managers would appreciate,” according to the International Business Review.

The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth
By Barry Naughton
MIT Press, 2007, 504 pages
$14.66 paperback

Naughton first presents a historical overview of the pre-1949 economy; then describes industrialization, reform, and market transitions that have taken place since. He analyzes patterns of growth and development, including population growth and the one-child family policy; the rural economy, including agriculture and rural industrialization; industrial and technological development in urban areas; international trade and foreign investment; macroeconomic trends and cycles and the financial system; and the largely unaddressed problems of environmental quality and the sustainability of growth.

Written as a textbook but accessible to general readers, it compares China’s economy with other transitional and developing economies, and also to advanced industrial countries such as the USA and Japan.

China Into the Future: Making Sense of the World’s Most Dynamic Economy
By W. John Hoffman and Michael Enright
Wiley, 2007, 220 pages
$19.77 hardcover

This book is notable for covering demographics, social imbalances, regional disparities, environmental degradation, and corruption, all of which will force the Chinese government to depart from past policies in unanticipated ways. It provides alternative scenarios for China’s future, rather than a single, linear projection.

For another look below the glossy surface of economic growth, see Empire of Lies: The Truth About China in the Twenty-First Century, by By Guy Sorman (Encounter Books, 2008, 325 pages; $16.72 hardcover, $7.99 Kindle). Sorman asserts that to achieve astonishing economic growth over the last three decades, China’s leaders have brutally oppressed the downtrodden masses and shackled its media under censorship. China has seduced the West into conferring greater legitimacy on it than do the Chinese themselves, says Sorman, who has traveled to China regularly since 1967 and lived there through 2005 and 2006.

The Chinese Century: The Rising Chinese Economy and Its Impact on the Global Economy, the Balance of Power, and Your Job
By Oded Shenkar
Wharton School Publishing, 2006, 256 pages
$12.23 paperback, $9.78 Kindle

Within 20 years China will have the world’s largest economy, if projections can be trusted. China’s continued growth is leading to a radical restructuring of the global business system, says Shenkar (professor of management and HR at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business). He also offers, in a new epilogue, strategies and tactics for U.S. companies to compete with Chinese companies and succeed in Chinese markets.

China is restoring its imperial glory by infusing modern technology and market economics into a non-democratic system controlled by the Communist Party bureaucracy. China is already the #2 economy in the world for direct foreign investment, behind the USA. The Chinese Century demonstrates how China is leveraging the world’s most powerful pool of human resources, how it will sustain dominance in low-tech industries as it enters high-tech realms, and how its disregard for intellectual property rights creates sustainable competitive advantage.

Superfusion: How China and America Became One Economy and Why the World’s Prosperity Depends on It
By Zachary Karabell
Simon & Schuster, 2009, 352 pages
$17.16 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle

In September 2008, China became the USA’s largest creditor. China buys billions of dollars in U.S. Treasury bills, which allows us to keep interest rates low; low interest rates encourage Americans to spend more money than they have; Americans especially like to consume low-priced Chinese goods; so China has been happy to fuel this cycle of investment and consumption. Thus our two countries have become partners, says Karabell: “The Chinese and U.S. economies have fused to become one integrated system. Americans should embrace this fusion, even if it means ceding some of our global dominance, to ensure our prosperity in the future.”

Karabell downplays the fact that the relationship is more a codependency than a partnership—like drug dealer and addict. Now the USA has overdosed on debt, while China keeps saving, investing, and growing. China’s premier Wen Jiabao stated that he is worried about the safety of China’s investment in the USA. How long can the “partnership” last? Karabell underestimates the potential for conflict and the impediments to the happily integrated system that he envisions.

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The End Of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression
By Harold James
Harvard University Press, 2002, 272 pages
$23.50 paperback, $9.99 Kindle

Globalization is not inexorable or irreversible. It is fragile. That is the message of The End of Globalization. It is written mainly for policymakers, economists, and scholars. But it is valuable for anyone who wants to understand the cyclical waxing and waning of globalization. James, a professor of history and international affairs at Princeton, points out that “there already have been highly developed and highly integrated international communities that dissolved under the pressure of unexpected events.” For example, the globally integrated world collapsed in the Great Depression, partly as a result of protectionist backlash, the failure of central banks, and immigration legislation. See any parallels in today’s world?

The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle
Harold James
Harvard University Press, 2009, 336 pages
$13.57 hardcover

James further explores the similarities and differences between the financial panics of 2008 and the early 1930s (especially the huge bank failures in Austria and Germany in 1931), and points out that financial crises provoke backlashes against global integration—not only against the mobility of capital and goods, but also against immigration. The world that emerges from the current recession, James says, will be shaped largely by China’s rise as a global power and America’s decline.

Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization
By Jeff Rubin
Random House, 2009, 304 pages
$17.16 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle

Rubin, an internationally renowned energy expert who lives in Toronto, predicts that oil prices will skyrocket again once the economy recovers. Consequently, the amount of food and other goods we get from abroad will be curtailed. Globalization as we know it will reverse. The good news for the USA: American industries, such as steel and agriculture, will be revitalized. Rubin prescribes priorities for President Obama, such as investing in mass transit. Rubin is the chief economist at CIBC World Markets.

Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization
By John Robb
Wiley, 2008, 224 pages
$10.17 paperback

Counterterrorism expert Robb reveals how the same technology that has enabled globalization also allows terrorists and criminals to join forces against larger adversaries. For example, they could inexpensively sabotage oil pipelines, disrupt the global financial markets, and shut down electronic networks to retard the flow of information–destroying worldwide economic and cultural integration. Robb makes suggestions for safeguarding against this new method of warfare.

Related review
The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy,
By David M. Smick

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The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (Updated)
By Thomas L. Friedman
Picador 2007, 672 pages
$10.88 paperback, $9.99 Kindle

The ironic title helped to make this a huge best-seller, but a more apt one would be “The World is Connected.” Friedman’s main premise is that Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (especially in Asia). Thanks to technological advances in such areas as Internet telephony, collaborative websites, open-source software like Linux, and ubiquitous connectivity (as well as lowered trade barriers), feelancers and startups anywhere in the world can compete not just for low-wage manufacturing and IT labor but, increasingly, for high-end scientific and legal research, engineering, programming, and design work as well.

The outsourcing and offshoring trends are unstoppable and desirable, even exciting to the optimist Friedman. Americans should adapt rather than protect: prepare to “create value through leadership.” The 2007 edition is updated with info about the political roots of global Islamism.

The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy
By David M. Smick
Portfolio 2008, 320 pages
$10.51 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle

Smick refutes Friedman’s description of the “flat” world produced by globalization, arguing instead that political resistance to globalization, retaliatory protectionism,  a lack of transparency in the global financial markets, and overheated economic development in China, among other conditions, have created a world where events and their consequences are unpredictable. The author writes clearly, illuminating complex subjects for general readers. Smick was an economic adviser to central bankers and legislators for some 30 years. (Derived from Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal reviews.)

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America
By Thomas L. Friedman
Farrar, Straus 2008, 448 pages
$9.78 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle

The USA has become a “subprime nation that thinks it can just borrow its way to prosperity,” says Friedman (him again). Nevertheless, the U.S. market is the “most effective and prolific system for transformational innovation.” Although professedly a proponent of the free market, he still advocates using government to create conditions favorable to investment.

One of those conditions is a cleaner global environment. We need alternate energy sources, and stronger conservation and recycling programs–a green revolution. We need to achieve greater energy independence to counter the “petrodictatorship” threat from the Middle East.

But one of the biggest threats, Friedman warns, comes from within: America’s loss of focus and national purpose since 9/11/01. Whether or not you agree, Friedman’s book is entertaining, with vivid anecdotes—this man has been around the block.

The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us
By Robyn Meredith
W.W. Norton 2007, 256 pages
$17.13 hardcover, $10.85 paperback, $9.56 Kindle, $19.79 audio CD

Since 2000, China has become “factory to the world, the United States became buyer to the world, and India…back office to the world,” says the author, who covers India and China for Forbes. In this thoroughly researched book, Meredith looks critically at each country’s economic development and plans for the future, and observes that China is making better progress than India because, for example, China’s citizens save more, while India’s infrastructure and education system are falling behind. Pro-trade and anti-protectionist, she believes that for the USA to stay competitive, it must “strengthen its education system, promote innovation, forget about protectionism…and focus on creating jobs.” (Booklist) [Click on the book image for more details or to purchase.]

Dancing With Giants: China, India, And the Global Economy
Edited by L. Alan Winters and Yashid Yusuf
World Bank Publications 2007, 288 pages
$24.95 paperback

This book’s seven chapters, each authored by leading researchers in their field, analyze China’s and India’s international trade, industrialization, foreign investment and capital flows, and impact of their broadening environmental footprints. It concludes that progress in alleviating poverty, reducing inequality, and promoting good governance is necessary for continued rapid and stable growth. It offers “deep insight into the prospects for Chinese and Indian growth and its likely impact on the world economy,” said Lawrence H. Summers, former Treasury secretary and professor of government at Harvard. [Click on the book image for more details or to purchase.]