China today has become a world economic giant in just three decades. The country's central bank holds more than $3.5 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, mostly in dollars. Without the Chinese colossus, the USA might have long ago gone bankrupt, unable to finance its exploding national debt. Now that China has emerged as the world's second largest economy, some powerful circles in Wall Street and Washington are alarmed that the Chinese might no longer follow the agenda, but decide for themselves what is best for China. They see China as a threat to their global power. The result is growing tension between Beijing and Washington - in the Middle East, Africa, and in Asia. Especially alarming is covert US backing of Japan in a conflict with China over remote Pacific islands. China is beginning to feel escalating hostility, and not only from the Pentagon. Open conflict between the USA and China could deal a death-blow to the fragile world economy. This book explains in clear terms what is at stake if Washington continues to try to turn the Chinese Dragon into an enemy state.

In the fourth century BC three conflicting points of view in Chinese philosophy received classic expression: the Taoist, the Confucianist, and the "Realist." This book underscores the interplay between these three philosophies, drawing on extracts from Chuang Tzu, Mencius, and Han Fei Tzu.

The United States and China are locked in a “cold tech war,” and the winner will end up dominating the twenty-first century. Beijing was not considered a tech contender a decade ago. Now, some call it a leader. America is already behind in critical areas. It is no surprise how Chinese leaders made their regime a tech powerhouse. They first developed and then implemented multiyear plans and projects, adopting a determined, methodical, and disciplined approach. As a result, China’s political leaders and their army of technocrats could soon possess the technologies of tomorrow. America can still catch up. Unfortunately, Americans, focused on other matters, are not meeting the challenges China presents. A whole-of-society mobilization will be necessary for the U.S. to regain what it once had: control of cutting-edge technologies. This is how America got to the moon, and this is the key to winning this century. Americans may not like the fact that they’re once again in a Cold War–type struggle, but they will either adjust to that reality or get left behind.

The rollicking story of a young man who goes to China with the misguided notion that he will help bring the Chines into the modern world, only to be schooled by the most resourceful and creative operators he would ever meet.

Exploring China's consumer revolution over the past three decades, this book shows a continuing cycle leading to excess supply and disappointing demand, at the centre of which lies exaggerated expectations of China's new consumers. Combining economic trends with the author’s anthropological background, China’s New Consumers details the livelihoods and lifestyles of China's new and evolving social categories who, divided by wealth, location and generation, have both benefited from and been disadvantaged by the past two decades of reform and rapid economic growth. Given that consumption is about so much more than shopping and spending, this book focuses on the perceptions, priorities and concerns of China's new consumers which are an essential part of any contemporary narrative about China's domestic market. Documenting the social consequences of several decades of rapid economic growth and the new interest in 'all-round' social development, China's New Consumers will be of value to students, entrepreneurs and a wide variety of readers who are interested in social trends and concerns in China today.

In State and Religion in China, Anthony Yu takes a fresh look at Chinese religion and its relation to politics. He argues, against those who claim that Chinese politics has been traditionally secular, or even that the Chinese traditionally had no religion that religion has deep roots in the Chinese past, and that the Chinese state has from its creation always interfered in relgious matters.

This volume brings together an international group of distinguished scholars to provide a fresh assessment of China's strategic military capabilities, doctrines, and its political perceptions in light of rapidly advancing technologies, an expanding and modernizing nuclear arsenal, and increased great-power competition with the United States.

"Does what it sets out to do and serves as a Chinese history text teenagers might actually read." —Asian Review of Books on Division to Unification in Imperial China The fourth volume in the Understanding China Through Comics series covers the stunningly productive Ming dynasty and its fall to the Manchus under the Qing, the last Chinese dynasty. The book also addresses Wang Yangming's School of Mind and the painful process of modernization and conflict with the West and Japan, including the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion. Includes timeline. Jing Liu is a Beijing- and Davis, CA–based designer and entrepreneur who uses his artistry to tell the story of China.

A century ago, outsiders saw China as a place where nothing ever changes. Today the country has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. In Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler explores the human side of China's transformation, viewing modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. In a narrative that gracefully moves between the ancient and the present, the East and the West, Hessler captures the soul of a country that is undergoing a momentous change before our eyes.