China and the Credit Crisis: The Emergence of a New World Order

Preface

My unusual experiences in China and with the Chinese over two decades led me to think some years ago about setting down some Chinese thoughts on paper. The catalysts to this book were provided by the credit crisis and its aftermath, and a period of enforced inactivity, with no telephones or family to disturb, in hospital in Kufstein, Austria in December 2008 with a broken leg. A period of two months spent in the French countryside in springtime has enabled me to complete this book about China and its new place in the world. A word or two of background is needed.

Since 1988 China has played a central role in my life and in my professional career. From knowing nothing about the country 20 years ago, my work over two decades has led me into an appreciation of the richness and depth of China’s society. Over time, I have become deeply interested in China, both for itself and for its connection with the rest of the world. My first personal contact with China was at the World Bank in Washington DC, where I met one of the first mainland Chinese economists to work there. Nearly four years later, we married in London. Our three-week honeymoon in China became my introduction to this remarkable and vast country. After my first day or two in Beijing, I felt as if I had arrived on a different planet, a sister to the planet Earth, with its own language and culture, its own attitudes, its own way of doing everything, owing virtually nothing to Western civilization. Although no one then ...