Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 In the early 1990s, when I was working in Beijing, I saw how the internet was the future of finance. A billion Chinese people now have an abundant choice of investments, loans, payments, and a host of conveniences, some of which surpass what is available in the United States. #2 Chinese tech companies Tencent and Alibaba were able to overcome the payment issue by building their own systems, which they then integrated into their platforms to offer a full range of services. #3 China’s fintech industry was a product of political support, which allowed tech companies to break through the moat surrounding state-owned banks and disrupt them. #4 Chinese tech companies Tencent and Alibaba were able to overcome the payment issue by building their own systems, which they then integrated into their platforms to offer a full range of services.

Financial Times, Best Books of 2022: Economics The startling picture of how China’s revolution in finance and technology is changing both Wall Street and the way individuals manage their personal finances. The future of finance – the way Wall Street operates and how individuals manage their money - is on the verge of upheaval. And the force underlying the change comes from China, where finance and technology are being merged into a system with consequences that resonate far beyond China’s border. The changes of this global revolution in finance and technology - fintech - will be as powerful as those wrought in social media, retailing and advertising by giants such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, which have overturned how we shop and communicate. China reinvented money with lightning speed, transforming a backward, antiquated cash-based finance system into one centered on super-apps created by technology giants Alibaba and Tencent. More powerful than anything available outside of China, they allow their billion users to pay, borrow, invest, buy goods and services, travel, chat (and far more) all fused together in one mobile phone application. Think Facebook, Google, Twitter, Goldman Sachs, Amazon, J.P. Morgan Chase all rolled into one app. We in the West need to understand China’s cashless revolution for reasons ranging from the macroeconomic to issues of personal liberty: The cutting edge of finance is now in China, forcing major financial firms in the United States and the West to figure out how not to be left behind.. China’s cashless revolution is also a harbinger of our future if we let the genie out of the bottle and allow big tech to become big finance. As money goes digital and central banks around the world consider launching digital currencies, we may have both immense convenience and a frightening concentration of power that could violate our privacy, stifle competition, increase financial risk, and give big firms or the government more control over our financial lives. And, once this genie is out of the bottle, the struggle to put it back in may be impossible.

Financial Times, Best Books of 2022: Economics The startling picture of how China’s revolution in finance and technology is changing both Wall Street and the way individuals manage their personal finances. The future of finance – the way Wall Street operates and how individuals manage their money - is on the verge of upheaval. And the force underlying the change comes from China, where finance and technology are being merged into a system with consequences that resonate far beyond China’s border. The changes of this global revolution in finance and technology - fintech - will be as powerful as those wrought in social media, retailing and advertising by giants such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, which have overturned how we shop and communicate. China reinvented money with lightning speed, transforming a backward, antiquated cash-based finance system into one centered on super-apps created by technology giants Alibaba and Tencent. More powerful than anything available outside of China, they allow their billion users to pay, borrow, invest, buy goods and services, travel, chat (and far more) all fused together in one mobile phone application. Think Facebook, Google, Twitter, Goldman Sachs, Amazon, J.P. Morgan Chase all rolled into one app. We in the West need to understand China’s cashless revolution for reasons ranging from the macroeconomic to issues of personal liberty: The cutting edge of finance is now in China, forcing major financial firms in the United States and the West to figure out how not to be left behind.. China’s cashless revolution is also a harbinger of our future if we let the genie out of the bottle and allow big tech to become big finance. As money goes digital and central banks around the world consider launching digital currencies, we may have both immense convenience and a frightening concentration of power that could violate our privacy, stifle competition, increase financial risk, and give big firms or the government more control over our financial lives. And, once this genie is out of the bottle, the struggle to put it back in may be impossible.

Following its two prequels, The China Order (2017) and The China Record (2023), this book analyzes the China Race, the global competition for power and leadership between the US-led West and the People's Republic of China. Considering the organizational options and optimality with respect to human civilization, Fei-Ling Wang discusses two alternative world orders: the Westphalian System of international relations and a centralized world political unification. Both are feasible and existed before, but with drastically different desirability. The rising power of the PRC state has consistently and methodically sought to recenter and reorganize the world to safeguard and promote its autocracy and, ultimately, build a world empire. Examining the nature, aims, means, accomplishments, pitfalls and failures of Beijing's foreign policy and the state of and developments in Sinology and the West's China policy, Wang focuses on the existential PRC-USA rivalry and proposes a holistic strategic framework, discussing three ranked objectives, for the West and the world, including the Chinese people, to manage, benefit from, and prevail in the China Race.

Cashless dives into the design and use of China's new central bank digital currency.

China’s emergence as a technology leader has become a major factor in geopolitics, transforming global political and economic relationships. In its bid to achieve digital great power status, China’s government has reformed laws and policies, drastically increased investment, and become more assertive internationally. Chinese companies have expanded at home and abroad, but relationships between government and the private sector have sometimes been fractious. The Emergence of China’s Smart State assesses the extent to which the Chinese government has been able to achieve its ambitious digital goals, and more broadly, how this reflects rapidly changing domestic and international political and economic dynamics surrounding China’s rise as a major technology player. This is the first book of its kind, interrogating the complex, dynamic interactions between political, market, and technological factors that structure China’s digital development. It will provide information and intellectual frameworks for scholars, policymakers, and professionals to appreciate the complexity of China’s digital policy landscape, the process of learning and iteration the Party continues to experience as external events impact the policy process, and the impact China’s innovation policies, regulations, and achievements have had, or may have, in the future.

Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy. They are the biggest job creators and offer a path to the American Dream. But for many, it is difficult to get the capital they need to operate and succeed. In Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream, former U.S. Small Business Administrator and Senior Fellow at Harvard Business School, Karen G. Mills, focuses on the needs of small businesses for capital and how technology will transform the small business lending market. This is a market that has been plagued by frictions: it is hard for a lender to figure out which small businesses are creditworthy, and borrowers often don't know how much money or what kind of loan they need. Every small business is different; one day the borrower is a dry cleaner and the next a parts supplier, making it difficult for lenders to understand each business's unique circumstances. Today, however, big data and artificial intelligence have the power to illuminate the opaque nature of a small business's finances and make it easier for them access capital to weather bumpy cash flows or to invest in growth opportunities. Beginning in the dark days following the 2008-9 recession and continuing through the crisis of the Covid-19 Pandemic, Mills charts how fintech has changed and will continue to change small business lending. In the new fintech landscape financial products are embedded in applications that small business owners use on daily basis, and data powered algorithms provide automated insights to determine which businesses are creditworthy. Digital challenger banks, big tech and traditional banks and credit card companies are deciding how they want to engage in the new lending ecosystem. Who will be the winners and losers? How should regulators respond? In this pivotal moment, Mills elucidates how financial innovation and wise regulation can restore a path to the American Dream by improving access to small business credit. An ambitious book grappling with the broad significance of small business to the economy, the historical role of credit markets, the dynamics of innovation cycles, and the policy implications for regulation, this second edition of Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream is relevant to bankers, regulators and fintech entrepreneurs and investors; in fact, to anyone who is interested in the future of small business in America.

How new technology is rapidly changing the nature of money and the way we pay A diverse and growing range of financial institutions and platforms—from PayPal and Venmo to WeChat, Alipay, and the brave new world of stablecoins—has harnessed new technology to disrupt the system of money and payments as we know it. Beyond Banks explains why this disruption holds out the promise of faster, cheaper, more convenient, and more secure payments, but also how it increasingly risks exposing consumers, businesses, and governments to the problem of bad money. Dan Awrey traces the origins of our current bundled system of banking, money, and payments. He explains why the problem of bad money—the result of antiquated and inadequate laws and regulation that fail to establish credible commitments to hold, transfer, or return a customer’s money on demand—requires that policymakers fundamentally rethink their approach toward the design of the laws and institutions at the heart of this system. He presents ways to effectively unbundle banking from money and payments, ensure the credibility of monetary commitments, and promote the stability of this system. Awrey also envisions a more forward-looking role for policymakers in encouraging greater technological experimentation, competition, and innovation in the realm of payments. Beyond Banks sheds critical light on the important but too often dysfunctional relationship among technology, regulation, and money, and lays the foundations for a safer, more nimble, and more inclusive system of money and payments.

"The rise of e-commerce has transformed China's economy over the past two decades. By late 2020, close to 800 million Chinese people had shopped online and more than 60 million citizens were directly or indirectly employed in e-commerce-related industries. Yet the rapid rise of the industry seems to defy conventional wisdom. For instance, China's e-commerce market took off without strong formal institutions to support it, challenging the prevailing notion in political economy that certain formal institutions like state-provided secure property rights, contract enforcement, and the rule of law are crucial pre-conditions for supporting efficient markets. Using a vast array of qualitative and quantitative data, Lizhi Liu reveals how, with weak rule of law, China instead outsourced part of its institutional functions to e-commerce companies themselves-prominent examples include Alibaba's Taobao.com and Tmall.com. Liu calls these companies "private regulatory intermediaries" (PRIs) and shows how they fulfill various legal, social, and political functions that the state might otherwise take on. Taobao, for example, has a complex reputation mechanism, a credit score, a fraud detection program, and even a jury-like system in which users can adjudicate cases or vote to change platform rules. Liu also explores how, beyond the systematic level, e-commerce has significant individual-level effects-namely, that e-commerce reduces the household cost of living but also distracts citizens from local political issues. Ultimately, this project goes beyond traditional analysis emphasizing either the rule of law or informal networks in supporting market development; it provides a lens to understand institutional experimentation broadly and deepens our understanding of state-business relationships in the Chinese context"--