Bill Dodson of This is China! Blog fame, is coming out with a book, entitled, China Inside Out: 10 Irreversible Trends Re-shaping China and its Relationship with the World and pre-ordering is now available on Amazon for delivery next month. I am certain the book will be good.
It is going to focus on the following ten “major social, economic, environmental and technological trends that are molding a China”:
CHAPTER 1: China’s Generation W(eb) – The Great Firewall of China seems monthly to become more sophisticated with growing armies of internet censors and cutting- edge technologies that filter and block web sites, emails, and text messages that promote the free flow of ideas and expression. But how far will government censors be able to go before a cyber- subculture of hundreds of millions of Chinese rebel en masse?
CHAPTER 2: Keeping Up with the Zhangs – Chinese are on average becoming richer, less healthy and more anxious as they eat more, drive more, smoke more, work more with few government assurances their assets and their futures are secure;
CHAPTER 3: Country Mouse, City Mouse – China needs its migrant workers from the countryside to build its cities, and, increasingly, to live in them, with ever increasing stresses between the have’s and the wanna have’s;
CHAPTER 4: “Not in My Backyard!” – As more Chinese embrace the ideal if not the practice of an American style middle class lifestyle, it is beating records as the world’s largest polluter of land, water and air resources;
CHAPTER 5: With the Appetite of a Dragon – China has been on a buying spree abroad as modernization leaves it with less arable land, food, crude oil and other mineral resources. Ultimately, though, it will find water more precious than oil, with dire implications for its neighbors.
CHAPTER 6: China 24/7 – As the East Coast becomes a more expensive and congested place in which to do business domestic and foreign production and infrastructure development is moving to China’s hinterlands, where 800 million Chinese literally work day and night to get rich and show it off;
CHAPTER 7: China, At Your Services – The hallmarks of China’s nascent services sector are a lack of civility, little sense of customer care and arcane bureaucracies. If only Chinese hospitals, for instance, were more like the country’s wedding industry, where the customer is queen, service level quality reigns and beating out the hundreds of local competitors is a matter of pride.
CHAPTER 8: The Global Sugar Daddy – As China becomes richer its trade practices, currency positions, stock markets, and foreign investments will matter more in the international marketplace, which will increasingly resist opaque Chinese business practices and inadequate quality and governance controls;
CHAPTER 9: Hot Pot Nation – China’s allure as the most populace country in the world has for millennia snared foreign and Chinese interests into cultivating and exploiting a source of tremendous wealth and energy. Now, population pressures lanced by the One Child Policy and a rapidly aging population with a below- par replacement rate are becoming national and global liabilities.
CHAPTER 10: In the Shadow of the Emperors – Chinese nationalism and militarization are increasingly filling the vacuum left by the lack of a civil society and the dearth of reflection on the country’s modern history, making its neighbors near and far anxious about how aggressively it will fulfill its role as a rising superpower.
I can hardly wait.
2-6-2011 UPDATE: This book just started shipping today in both physical form and via the Kindle.
