Product Description

"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 across the globe. In China Shakes the World, the former China bureau chief of the Financial Times, James Kynge, traces these tremors from Beijing to Europe to the Midwest as China's ravenous hunger for jobs, raw materials, energy, and food -- and its export of goods, workers, and investments -- drastically reshape world trade and politics.

Delving beyond mere recitation of by-now-familiar statistics, Kynge's on-the-ground reporting provides alternative explanations for China's explosive transformation, revealing many of the usual reasons given for its growth to be myths. Most important for the future, he details China's deep, systemic weaknesses -- rampant fraud, crippling environmental crises, a corrupt banking system, faltering government institutions, a rapidly aging population -- that threaten even greater global disruptions. And he demonstrates the profound consequences of those weaknesses for American manufacturers, oil companies, banks, and ordinary consumers.

Through dramatic stories of entrepreneurs and visionaries, factory workers and store clerks at the heart of this global phenomenon, China Shakes the World explains how China's breakneck rise occurred, the extraordinary problems the country now faces, and the consequences of both for the twenty-first century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78669 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-27
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

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)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
A former bureau chief of the Financial Times in Beijing, Kynge demonstrates how China's thirst for jobs, raw materials, energy, and new markets--and its export of goods, workers, and investments--will dramatically reshape world trade and politics. China's appetite, though unpremeditated and inarticulate, has become a source of major change in the world. Napoleon said, "Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world." In the early days of the twenty-first century, China has started shaking the world with its prowess in manufacturing. Not all is rosy, however, because China has serious problems with its environmental resources, severe pollution, and institutionalized corruption within the government, the legal system, the police force, and the media. The question Kynge offers answers to is how the world will cope with China's extremes of both strength and weakness. Gail Whitcomb
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Kynge's crisp assessment of the dynamics involved is both authoritative and eye-opening. (Publishers Weekly )

Should the U.S. worry about China? Most definitely—but, by Kynge's account, for different reasons from the ones being raised on Capitol Hill. (Kirkus Reviews )

Customer Reviews

Good perspective on China in relation to the world
Writing this in 2008, May, I have to say that I enjoyed the book, it left me with an idea of China's position in the world, but also on how few I know about such a great and big country. It states facts, and very little opinions, and some of the facts are individual stories from which you have to draw your own conclusions.

Anyway, as a big country, I finish the book feeling the need to read and know way more about China, geography, history, different peoples; but if books sizes relate to the country size and history, we may talk thousands of pages!

The book suffer the couple of years since the edition, and one misses more actual stories and references to recent news.

Interesting discussion of the opportunities and challenges facing China's development
James Kynge, in his book China Shakes the World, states that a key question is whether or not the Western world will be able to "accommodate the manifestations of extreme strengths and profound weaknesses that are emanating from China." This 2006 Financial Times Business Book of the Year is an interesting and informative read. It provides snapshots of some of the effects that China's economic development has had around the world.

Throughout his book Kynge seeks to capture the impact of China's rise by examining its effect on a variety industries in places such as Dortmund, Germany; Prato, Italy; and Rockford, Illinois. He discusses the global evolution of Chinese companies from steel production to high fashion.

In addition to detailing the success stories of industries and rags-to-riches entrepreneurs, Kynge also examines a number of challenges that may impede China's future development. One of these challenges is the cutthroat domestic competition in manufacturing and the piracy associated with it. Kynge also highlights a number of the stark environmental problems facing China as a result of its rapid industrialization. On the whole, China Shakes the World provides a balanced account of many of China's strengths and weaknesses.

Good high-level look at current topics in China
In preparation for a business trip to China, the first book I read was China Shakes the World by James Kynge. Mr. Kynge is a journalist with over twenty years of experience in Asia. The book is an easy read covering a number of current topics: Piracy, Environmental Concerns, Technology, Communism and the China/U.S. Relationship. The book offers a balanced look at China showing both the opportunity and challenges the country faces. No conclusions are drawn about the future, but the book is a good high-level look across the many facets of China.