Arthur R. Kroeber

China is on track to exceed the United States as the world's largest economy in the next several years. It is already the leading global trading nation. Even though its growth rate has recently slowed from years past, China has had the fastest yearly growth rate of any country for much of thelast three decades. In China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know, Arthur Kroeber offers an overview of the highlights of China's development since economic reforms were initiated under Deng Xiaoping in 1979. He argues that manufacturing, agricultural change, and construction reoriented the economy in the 1980s and1990s through state-owned enterprises, private entrepreneurship, and foreign investment. Those shifts unleashed perhaps the largest migration ever in world history from rural areas to urban centers, accompanied by a no less unprecedented expansion of infrastructure. Changes in the country's fiscaland financial systems vastly increased China's monetary holdings from the 1990s onwards, leading to the country's strategic holding of more U.S. debt than any other nation. Kroeber also examines economic growth as it has been experienced by Chinese workers and consumers, including the mountingproblems of income and wealth inequality, corruption, and environmental degradation. Kroeber ultimately turns to the consequences of Chinese economic growth: its decisive impact on the world economy, its visible and challenging resource extraction from Africa and Latin America, and its increasingengagement with global economic institutions.

What Everyone Needs to Know

China's Economy

China's economic growth has been revolutionary, and is the foundation of its increasingly prominent role in world affairs. It is the world's second biggest economy, the largest manufacturing and trading nation, the consumer of half the world's steel and coal, the biggest source of international tourists, and one of the most influential investors in developing countries from southeast Asia to Africa to Latin America. Multinational companies make billions of dollars in profits in China each year, while traders around the world shudder at every gyration of the country's unruly stock markets. Perhaps paradoxically, its capitalist economy is governed by an authoritarian Communist Party that shows no sign of loosening its grip. China is frequently in the news, whether because of trade disputes, the challenges of its Belt and Road initiative for global infrastructure, or its increasing military strength. China's political and technological challenges, created by a country whose political system and values differ dramatically from most of the other major world economies, creates uncertainty and even fear. China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know® is a concise introduction to the most astonishing economic and political story of the last three decades. Arthur Kroeber enhances our understanding of China's changes and their implications. Among the essential questions he answers are: How did China grow so fast for so long? Can it keep growing and still solve its problems of environmental damage, fast-rising debt and rampant corruption? How long can its vibrant economy co-exist with the repressive one-party state? How do China's changes affect the rest of the world? This thoroughly revised and updated second edition includes a comprehensive discussion of the origins and development of the US-China strategic rivalry, including Trump's trade war and the race for technological supremacy. It also explores the recent changes in China's political system, reflecting Xi Jinping's emergence as the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. It includes insights on changes in China's financial sector, covering the rise and fall of the shadow banking sector, and China's increasing integration with global financial markets. And it covers China's rapid technological development and the rise of its global Internet champions such as Alibaba and Tencent.

What Everyone Needs to Know®

China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know® is a concise introduction to the most astonishing economic growth story of the last three decades. In the 1980s China was an impoverished backwater, struggling to escape the political turmoil and economic mismanagement of the Mao era. Today it is the world's second biggest economy, the largest manufacturing and trading nation, the consumer of half the world's steel and coal, the biggest source of international tourists, and one of the most influential investors in developing countries from southeast Asia to Africa to Latin America. China's growth has lifted 700 million people out of poverty. It has also created a monumental environmental mess, with smog-blanketed cities and carbon emissions that are a leading cause of climate change. Multinational companies make billions of dollars in profits in China each year, but traders around the world shudder at every gyration of the country's unruly stock markets. Most surprising of all, its capitalist economy is governed by an authoritarian Communist Party that shows no sign of loosening its grip. How did China grow so fast for so long? Can it keep growing and still solve its problems of environmental damage, fast-rising debt and rampant corruption? How long can its vibrant economy co-exist with the repressive one-party state? What do China's changes mean for the rest of the world? China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know® answers these questions in straightforward language that you don't need to be an economist to understand, but with a wealth of detail drawn from academic research, interviews with dozens of company executives and policy makers, and a quarter-century of personal experience. Whether you're doing business in China, negotiating with its government officials, or a student trying to navigate the complexities of this fascinating and diverse country, this is the one book that will tell you everything you need to know about how China works, where it came from and where it's going.

Arthur R. Kroeber

About

Books

Join the club