China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future -- and the Challenge for America (Edition 001)

If you read only one book in 2009, James Kynge's China Shakes the World is the one to read. This is so first of all because the impact of China on the world and your life is something you need to understand, no matter who you are. Secondly, Kynge has lived in China since 1982, is fluent in Mandarin and thus has both a deep understanding of the country and the ability to communicate with people there. Finally, as the former bureau chief of the Financial Times in Beijing, Kynge has the knowledge to write about this topic.

What was remarkable to me as I started to read the book is Kynge's attention to small details that tell a major story. For example he tells about the disappearance of large numbers of manhole covers from many parts of the world starting in mid-February, 2004. The reason, Kynge points out, is that they were stolen and shipped to China to help sate China's voracious appetite for iron. It is this eye for detail and its larger meaning that gives the book much of its value. Furthermore, my initial expectation was that the book would be dry and statistically oriented given the writer's background. But Kynge is really an excellent writer who uses words much as a world-class novelist might.

While clearly delineating the upside of China's economic miracle, Kynge also demonstrates the downside: the displacement of people and disruption of social values, the enormous destruction to the environment, the tension between an authoritarian political system and a capitalist economy, etc. He does this effectively with stories about people, not just by listing facts. For example on page 83 he describes the success story of Wang Yihua, a young woman who left China to find success as a fashion designer in Italy. Many of the examples come from his ability to communicate in Mandarin and his tenacity as a reporter, such as his description of the life of Shen Wenrong and his efforts, finally successful, to obtain an interview with him.

There are some minor flaws in the book. One is that it is now five years old and some of the information is out of date. Given the rapid pace of change in China an updated edition would not be out of the question. Another, in my view, is his use of the word "value" when he really means "price."

But all in all reading this book will open your eyes on the development of China and its real and potential impact on the world.

I picked this book up while doing quite a bit of reading on East Asia, and it's by far the best I chose. Telling the tale of China through experiences and interviews was a brilliant way to make a lot of information easily digestible. This book wasn't written to tell the scholarly what they already know, it was written so that those interested could begin to grasp this complicated country. After reading, be ready to convince yourself that you shouldn't buy a ticket over (unless you can afford it, then get out of here) because this book will likely do for you what it did for me, create the beginnings of understanding with an insatiable hunger for everything Chinese.

Good stories that give an understanding of what's been happening in China since the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989.

Kynge recounts the rise of China as an economic and resource-sucking giant on the world scene in the last 20 years. The story, as usual with China and its 1.3 billion people, hinges on the massive markets and demand that even fractions of that enormity can generate.

The good news is that the shift of manufacturing to China, with its extremely (and artificially, Kynge points out) low production costs, has resulted in a flood of cheaper goods in the US and Europe, and that China has been buying billions of US treasury notes which of kept mortgage rates low. The bad news is these trends may not be sustainable, that any manufacturing still outside of China may be completely sucked into the Eastern giant, and that world resource demand (oil, steel, water, environment as a resource) by the Chinese giant may suck the world dry and create massive price and allocation problems.

Whether the reader is optimistic or pessimistic, in either case it is a troubled future, as the subtitle says, that awaits.

China Shakes the World is a well documented panorama of what China is moving to be in the near future. Yet the author writes in a spirit that is as entertaining in its irony as it is instructive. He uses statistics, particularly, that rock the reader, i.e., the number of young Chinese girls who commit suicide each day out of sheer hopelessness. (500+) Many of his figures demonstrate the impact of the sheer size of China's population, now more than 1.3 billion.
I recommend China Shakes the World as a resource book to keep on hand, a program of events that is already unfolding whether we in the West like it or not.