Review: China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know

China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know by Arthur R. Kroeber
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve read a number of books and magazine articles about the Chinese economy and the future, as well as listening to many podcasts and news stories over the past few years. These sources tended to extremes when forecasting the future, and often offered wildly differing forecasts. Either China becomes the ruler of global finances, spreading its influence through Asia, Africa, and the world and replacing the US and the EU. Or it fails through some weakness. There are many weaknesses reported in various sources, including corruption, a rapidly aging population, lack of inventiveness, pollution, uneven wealth distribution, and more. These opposite forecasts make me wonder which is correct. I read this book hoping to understand this better.

“China’s Economy” does a good job of describing the many winds in favor of China, while also covering those winds that blow ill. In the final reconning, I would say that those opposite forecasts were both wrong to some extent, but also both correct. China’s economy will continue to grow, through occasional setbacks. But the many setbacks would appear to be enough to keep China from taking a strong lead in becoming the main global economy and will restrict the country to be one of a handful of global financial superpowers, at best.

This book was written in a non-academic style, but did a great job of explaining the issues, providing background, and describing the scenarios for the future. I appreciated the summation in the final chapters laying out the interplay of issues and their impact on the future. Note this was released before the Trump foreign policy era began, so you can tell that some of the options listed were no longer likely given the beginning of tighter scrutiny from the US. I would give this another 3 or 4 years before needing a major update. That’s not bad for this type of book.


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