“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.
