In this comprehensive, contemporary look at the awakening giant that is
China, Peter Navarro describes an emerging power beleaguered by both internal
and external threats-if the Japanese don't get them, AIDS and SARS will. This
will reassure those readers who are increasingly convinced that the Chinese
will eat us for lunch. However, as Navarro points out, China's human and
natural resources make her a formidable global player-and her native, amoral
ruthlessness suggests she will win. Still, as a nation undergoing its Industrial
Revolution in the Information Age, China has her problems transitioning from
Communism to capitalist imperialism, as seems to be her goal. True, government
and industry have forged strong bonds (that allow them to exploit slave labor
and ignore environmental and economic constraints that hamper other nations),
but like any modern nation, China is paying the price of competing in a global
economy: pollution; rapacious private medical care expenses; an aging, under-
pensioned population; international tensions; and a large and disgruntled
peasant working class. Navarro, whose inclination to breathless hyperbole makes
even a chapter on dam construction exciting, tellingly devotes 10 chapters to
China's problems and one to their solution-essentially tired policy
prescriptions (wean the U.S. from oil dependence and cheap Chinese imports).
This informative book will teach readers to understand the dragon, just not
how to vanquish it.

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