Understanding A Changing China

As China becomes the world’s largest economy, so it becomes important to understand the key issues shaping the country’s business environment and the behaviour of Chinese businesspeople. This is difficult because those issues are contested. Is China growing at 3% or 8%? Is the Chinese consumer going to save the world? Are state-owned enterprises national champions or zombies? Have we reached the end of "Cheap China"? Can China innovate? Is business still dominated by personal connections? Are markets or the state in control? Does Chinese culture impede or support organizational effectiveness? Are Chinese dragons at your door? Will the finance and property sectors implode? Is the Chinese model sustainable, or will it end in tears? On all these issues there is ill-informed "noise", and an abundance of partisan interpretations. The purpose of this book, therefore, is to provide an even-handed analysis of the key issues that will shape the threats and opportunities arising from China’s development in the next decade. It cannot resolve the competing claims made. However, it does provide the reader with the ideas and the sources of evidence needed to understand and to make well thought-out judgments as China continues to evolve.

Using empirical research data and his first-hand experiences, the author argues that (1) the Fourth Economic Power is truly emerging with mainland China being the center stage, and the Chinese Diaspora being the key players; (2) understanding guanxi (connections), among other things, represents the key to understanding doing business in China; (3) China is not yet ready for democracy; benevolent authoritarianism will most likely define China's political life; (4) China's corruption problem—either of a structural nature or a moral nature—is solvable; (5) education holds China's future; and (6) Chinese family can be the most sustainable resource of the Fourth Power.

The Asia environmental correspondent for the "Guardian" delivers a fascinating, frontline account of the current environmental crisis in China.

When China opened its borders to travelers and its economy to international trade, businesses all over the world took note. With well over one billion people, it represented a huge potential marketplace for goods and services. Huge as it is, however, China is not a monolithic culture. Though deeply rooted in native traditions, its contemporary marketplace is eclectic, combining Chinese regional styles with elements borrowed from foreign cultures. Most of all, it is evolving at a remarkable pace. To succeed in that dynamic emerging market, smart businesses need to understand its driving influences—especially its urban youth. Authors Lianne Yu, Cynthia Chan, and Christopher Ireland bring their collective experience and perspective to this thoughtful, beautifully illustrated analysis of the world’s fastest-growing market. Focusing on four fundamental aspects of the consumer Chinese lifestyle—food, style, home life, and mobility—they show how Chinese culture is speedily developing into a radically new form. Anyone who is interested in expanding his or her business in China should not miss this analysis.

This book reviews and examines the reform and opening up in China from 1978 to 2011. It analyzes how China avoided to fall into the middle-income trap over those 33 years. The book makes a deep analysis of understanding how Chinese economy became a miracle in the world economic history and its development stages, as well as the overseas erroneous understanding of the existence of Chinese economy. The author analyzes from three aspects: how to break the “impossible triangle”, how to achieve middle-to-high speed growth in L model, and how to release a new dividend of urbanization. After Chinese economy entered the Lewis turning point, China faced the dilemma of labor transformation and the disappearance of demographic dividend, the demographic dividend turned to the reform dividend. The author points out and suggests that a new round of growth should be achieved by improving the total factor productivity in order to find a new way for the Chinese economy. This book plays an important role of comprehending Chinese economy under current complex economic situation. This book helps readers to understand Chinese economy from many aspects: impossible triangle, L model growth, Malthus trap, dual economy, aging problem, demographic dividend, reform dividend, trap of middle income, globalization, etc. The author as an economist aims for the public explaining the professional knowledge in a concise and easy way. This book delivers the information of discerning and understanding the economic trend, and predicting the future.

"Changing China" by William Gascoyne-Cecil, Florence Mary Lady Cecil. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

An eye-opening and previously untold story, Factory Girls is the first look into the everyday lives of the migrant factory population in China. China has 130 million migrant workers—the largest migration in human history. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China’s Pearl River Delta. As she tracks their lives, Chang paints a never-before-seen picture of migrant life—a world where nearly everyone is under thirty; where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a mobile phone; where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Chang takes us inside a sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital, movie theater, and fire department; to posh karaoke bars that are fronts for prostitution; to makeshift English classes where students shave their heads in monklike devotion and sit day after day in front of machines watching English words flash by; and back to a farming village for the Chinese New Year, revealing the poverty and idleness of rural life that drive young girls to leave home in the first place. Throughout this riveting portrait, Chang also interweaves the story of her own family’s migrations, within China and to the West, providing historical and personal frames of reference for her investigation. A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America’s shores remade our own country a century ago.

Chen, He and Yan present a range of applications of multiple-source big data to core areas of contemporary sociology, demonstrating how a theory-guided approach to macrosociology can help to understand social change in China, especially where traditional approaches are limited by constrained and biased data. In each chapter of the book, the authors highlight an application of theory-guided macrosociology that has the potential to reinvigorate an ambitious, open-minded and bold approach to sociological research. These include social stratification, social networks, medical care, and online behaviours among many others. This research approach focuses on macro-level social process and phenomena by using quantitative models to statistically test for associations and causalities suggested by a clearly hypothesised social theory. By deploying theory-oriented macrosociology where it can best assure macro-level robustness and reliability, big data applications can be more relevant to and guided by social theory. An essential read for sociologists with an interest in quantitative and macro-scale research methods, which also provides fascinating insights into Chinese society as a demonstration of the utility of its methodology.