China Rises
by John Farndon
Virgin Books, HK$136
As books about China continue to be pumped out, readers who were slow to the sluice gates may feel left behind. To catch up, they could do worse than read John Farndon's China Rises. If the title sounds generic that is because the book aims simply to give an overview of the country's state of affairs. However, dotted throughout are statistics and facts that jump out, even for those who have read them elsewhere and somehow forgotten them. An example is the point that 53 million people lost their jobs from 1996 to 2001 because of the closure of almost 40,000 state-run businesses. That is worse than matters would be if the world's 500 biggest global corporations closed overnight, Farndon quotes Ted Fishmann's China Inc as revealing. In the section 'China's Secret', which is barely one and a half pages, the main reasons given for the country's becoming an economic powerhouse so quickly are the enormous labour force and investment (domestic and foreign). Readers may come away dissatisfied with this and other portions that could have been whole books. But that may be China Rises' selling point. It prompts readers to seek in-depth works should any topics appeal.
