China's Megatrends

In this summary you will learn

• How eight megatrends affect China’s future
• How China balances state control with doses of individual freedom
• How China is developing – from an optimistic point of view

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Why you should read China's Megatrends

Futurist John Naisbitt was never one for understatement, and that holds true with this sweeping book on China. His early works broke ground and brought provocative ideas to light. This book, written with his wife, Doris Naisbitt, is less revolutionary. With warm enthusiasm, the authors present a comprehensive, generous compilation of eight major forces shaping China. They explain China’s politics simply and straightforwardly, with a generous dose of quotes from former leader Deng Xiaoping and others. The Naisbitts’ prose style and their slogans or sayings seem to lilt with a slightly Chinese cadence and, sometimes, even sentence structure. The book is not directed at cognoscenti who seek academic or deep coverage of China’s complexities, contradictions and challenges. Instead, getAbstract finds that it is a very accessible look at how China is evolving today, written for an interested but not expert general audience and slightly sugared with an accent on the positive. The authors praise China’s leaders – and even laud the fact that most leaders aren’t elected – and believe that criticism of China is based on misunderstandings that will clear up as the eight forces they list come to fruition over time.

About the Authors

John Naisbitt has studied China since 1967 and has visited more than 100 times. Since 2007, Doris Naisbitt has directed the Naisbitt China Institute. She is also a professor at Nankai University.