"Since the age of Marco Polo, the West has been entranced by China's promise, viewing its vast population and resources as an unrivaled opportunity for expanding trade. During the 1990s, China astounded the world with double-digit annual growth rates, while attracting over $300 billion in foreign investment capital - an amount greater than any country other than the United States - into an economy smaller than that of Spain and the Netherlands combined.

As it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, politicians, economists, and business leaders the world over hailed China's potential and envisioned that within a generation the juggernaut nation would develop into a market for goods and services that would dwarf all others.".

"In The China Dream, financial journalist and China expert Joe Studwell takes to task these predictions - and instead sees a looming crisis. He argues that throughout the centuries, empires and entrepreneurs - from the Portuguese who colonized Macau to Britain's Lord Macartney to renowned financier Armand Hammer - have invested vast resources in the hopes of developing the markets of the Middle Kingdom, only to have the economy crash and their dreams turn to dust.

Studwell makes the case that this cycle is playing out once more. Beginning with the arrival of the Christian missionaries and European trade emissaries of the sixteenth century, The China Dream tells the story of capitalism's attempted conquests of China and traces the more recent developments, from Deng Xiaoping's "liberalization" of its market in the 1980s through the investment gold rush of the 1990s.

In a rigorous analysis of the Chinese economy, government, and business culture, Studwell shows the roadblocks to the continuation of this unprecedented expansion and why China's economy is destined to stall once more - but now with potentially catastrophic results that would be felt around the world."--BOOK JACKET.