China Shakes The World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future -- and the Challenge for America - Softcover

Kynge, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0618919066 ISBN 13: 9780618919062

Publisher: Harper Business, 2007

Synopsis

“Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world.” Napoleon’s words seem eerily prescient today, as the shock waves from China’s awakening reverberate around the globe. Award-winning journalist James Kynge takes measure of the tremors made as China’s ravenous hunger for jobs, raw materials, energy, and food — and its export of goods, workers, and investments — drastically reshapes world trade and politics. Through dramatic stories of the people who are driving China's transformation — entrepreneurs and visionaries, factory workers and store clerks — Kynge describes the breakneck rise of China, the extraordinary problems the country now faces, and the consequences of both.

About this title

About the Author:

James Kynge, a journalist in Asia for two decades, is the former bureau chief of the Financial Times in Beijing. Fluent in Mandarin, he has visited every Chinese province and is the recipient of numerous journalism awards. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and has appeared on CNN, the BBC, and National Public Radio.

From Publishers Weekly:

Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, binding its billion-plus population more tightly to the global economic system, the Asian giant's prodigious appetite for food, technology and natural resources has dramatically accelerated profound changes already well underway across the planet. Kynge, the Financial Times's former Beijing bureau chief, makes the voracious "appetites" of the new China his constant concern, as he uncovers the sources of and limitations on the giant country's epochal growth. Beginning with a scene in Germany's postindustrial Ruhr—where a steel mill is sold, deconstructed and shipped more than 5,000 miles for reassembly near the banks of the Yangtze River—Kynge assesses the socioeconomic transformations of China's low "Industrial Revolution–era" labor costs and modern production technology at home and abroad. But for all its world-shaking potential, notes Kynge, "China's endowments are deeply lopsided." Key weaknesses—such as a shortage of arable land, serious environmental devastation and pollution, systemic corruption and a dearth of resources—are conversely helping to ensure that China will have to manage its growing hegemony in a symbiotic manner with partners on the economic and geopolitical playing fields. Despite the subtitle, and a chapter devoted to China's acquisition of U.S. technologies, Kynge focuses at least as much on China's significance for Western Europe. Overall, Kynge's crisp assessment of the dynamics involved is both authoritative and eye-opening. (Sept. 27)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0618919066
• ISBN 13: 9780618919062
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288