The China Dream: The Elusive Quest for the Last Great Untapped Market on Earth - Tapa blanda

*Independent: "a finely researched, important and cautionary contribution to our understanding of contemporary China". *Observer: "provides an invaluable guide to the money-sink that is the contemporary Chinese economy". * Spectator: "the book's clarity of expression will make it hard for even the most determined dreamers to refute". * Daily Telegraph: "a very readable account both of China's economic challenges and of the foolishness of too many Western businessmen over the past decade".

For 700 years, ever since outsiders first wrote about the place, the world has believed there are untold riches to be harvested in China. More recently, with the rise of globalisation, the spread of capitalism, and the growth in its population to 1.3 billion, the belief in China's unparalleled potential has taken on the order of an obsession. During the 90s, China astounded the world with double-digit annual growth rates while attracting over $300 billion in foreign investment. Politicians, economists and business leaders everywhere foresaw in China a market for goods and services to dwarf all others. In this thoroughly researched and engaging book, Joe Studwell provides a provocative analysis of the `China Dream'. He takes to task these predictions of growth - and instead foresees an economic crisis for China in the wake of the foreign-investment gold rush of the last ten years. A crisis that will destroy the hopes of outsiders realising their investment dreams.