China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know® - Tapa dura

"If the notion of a middle way sounds intuitively appealing, Arthur Kroeber's book brings rigour to the debate to show why it is also the most likely outcome. A longtime China analyst now managing an independent research firm, he launches an assault, albeit courteously worded, on conventional wisdom from the two opposing camps. What emerges is a nuanced take on an economy facing serious challenges, ones that do not spell its collapse but could prove intractable all the same."--The Economist "Thankfully Arthur Kroeber has [condensed] many years of studying and writing about the Chinese economy into a single-volume portrait accessible to the generalist. Aside from the clear descriptive prose and judicious organisation this book achieves two things. On the one hand it lays out a detailed framework of how China works that will be recognisable to experts, and accessible to newcomers, breaking the whole into a series of digestible parts. On the other hand it offers a layer of measured assessment aimed at addressing the full range of pressing issues affecting China."--Forbes "Few have watched the development of the Chinese economy as closely as Arthur Kroeber. [China's Economy] is a wide-ranging and authoritative primer on the history and development of China's unique blend of decentralized economic authoritarianism."--Quartz

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 the last 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 and 1990s 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 fiscal and 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 mounting problems 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 increasing engagement with global economic institutions.