China Shakes the World

CHINA SHAKES THE WORLD: A TITAN’S RISE AND TROUBLED FUTURE: James Kynge: Houghton Mifflin: 2006: Biography: 270 pages
Since Marlise and I went to China we've been reading all the books we can about that country. I highly recommend China, Inc. by Ted C. Fishman along with this book. They are both quite readable and present startling information about the accelerating development of China. You can thank China for low cost the merchandise in our stores, from dollar stores to expensive brand name items, air pollution along the western coast of the US; you can also thank them for the high cost of gas (oil demand from China has increased global prices for oil) and many other things both positive and negative.

Here's a review from Booklist that I copied from Amazon:

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

SH