In December 2001, China agreed to join the World Trade Organization. According to projections, economic reforms undertaken since 1978 will help China to increase its GDP to $2.2 trillion by 2010, standing behind the United States, Japan and Germany. This progress raises many serious questions for its internal transformation and her role in the global economy.
The book considers carefully the economic, social and political consequences of this event. The phenomenal success of recent economic growth is attributed to high savings rates, protective laws and strong and effective government policies. However, the great challenges facing China to become a truly modern state are institutional reforms for sustained economic growth.
Based on the World Bank's projections, China would become the world's second largest economy in 2020 with 8% of global output, trailing the United States with a 19% share. If this happens, China's skilled workers would also see the world's highest wage gains, nearly a double increase! Consequently, the great challenge China's government and the World Trade Organization will face is to make sure that all levels of society receive a fair share of its economic growth.
Supachai Panitchpakdi and Mark Clifford correctly believe that globalization and trade promoted by the WTO for all nations, many of which are small, are equally important for China as well. Numerous studies indicate that there is a strong correlation between free trade and growth. Finally, it should be recognized, that China's entry into the WTO will dramatically raise the stakes for its Asian neighbors and rivals. It would attract more foreign investment followed by a higher sustained rate of growth and in turn would increase international trade and development and help other countries to develop their economies as well.

This book explains the contradictions of the new "upper class", which Brooks named Bobos, short for bourgeois bohemians and shows how they have combined the ethos of the eighties with the idealism of the sixties. The author displays a great sense of humor when he describes today's executive as having gone from SDS to CEO and from LSD to IPO. A neoconservative, Brooks celebrates this transformation and cites Cesar Grana's 1964 work, Bohemian versus Bourgeois, which describes the intellectuals' contempt for bourgeois culture in early 19th Century France. You may recall that Thorstein Veblen in his book, Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899, also used the satirical concept of conspicuous consumption to explain why people acquire goods for their status rather than for their utility. Since then, other writers have tried to do the same. However, Brooks, who is obviously one of them, is ambivalent about the Bobos' behavior and it is left for the reader to decide whether the Bobos are enlightened revolutionaries or revolutionaries who have sold out. It is ironic that having praised the virtues of Bobos' lifestyles, at the end Brooks seems to be afraid that "we are threatened with a new age of complacency". Are the Bobos exhausted already or are they shallow yuppies? Nevertheless, this book is indeed comic sociology worth reading.

The central thesis of this book is that the continuously falling cost of information will be the main source of future wealth for individuals and corporations. McInerney and White start by establishing four Laws. First, cheap information allows customers to pay lower prices. Second, as the cost of information falls, computer power shifts from big computers to small ones. Third, value added always flows to the least regulated,and Fourth, the three Laws operate simultaneously. Based on their experience as consultants to corporations, McInerney and White assert that four companies, Charles Schwab, Wal-Mart, Dell Computers, and Cisco Systems, conform precisely to their specifications. They discuss many others as well. Although a lot of information is covered in short chapters, the book is easy to read and it should be of interest to those concerned with wealth creation in the ever changing new economy.

In this well-researched book, Robert Shiller explains how investors are led to speculate as if in the new economy there is no risk of a downturn.He presents plenty of evidence to show how mass psychology and behavior have created what has come to resemble a speculative bubble. Providing extensive statistical evidence, Shiller also shows how economists and commentators in the media justify higher market levels based on theories about the efficiency and behavior of the new stock market. The book concludes with a warning on the serious implications of this speculative behavior and offers some suggestions to investors and institutions to minimize their risk.

Although I do not agree with the pessimism of Neo-Malthusians and end-of-history advocates, I found Robert Kaplan's new book an eloquent warning against apathy as we enter a new century. Kaplan correctly points out that the map of the world is deceiving. Most frontiers do not include or define nations based on a single ethnicity and/or religion, i.e., the essential cohesive force for a stable society is missing. Based on his travels around the Third World, the author observed that rapidly expanding populations, urbanization without adequate infrastructures and environmental disasters are causing the collapse of marginal states and their forcible integration into Yugoslavia-type states. Soaring populations and shrinking raw materials make democracy problematic and stability uncertain ,espcially, in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Influenced by such writers as Huntington, Home-Dixon, van Gleveld, Rahe and others cited in the text - unfortunately there is no bibliography - Kaplan believes that homogeneous states such as Germany and Japan may not face the certain fragmentation of multiethnic societies, perhaps even the United States. Although the writing is uneven - the last third of the book consists of essays published previously - Kaplan does develop some interesting themes: Democratically elected regimes do not survive if the economy is not developed enough to prevent the return of authoritarian governments. Enlightened despotism is not preferable to democracy. The preferred alternative may be the middle for those countries which are trying to develop their economies without falling into anarchy. Like Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts, this book is a warning and perhaps a prohesy.

Amidst the cacophony about the wonders of globalization and the new millennium's everlasting prosperity and bull market, Richard Sennett has the intellectual courage to present some of the negative consequences of global capitalism on a vast number of workers whose skills and dedication the economy and markets depend upon. Jobs are replaced by "projects" and "fields of work" and the moto for organizing working time is "no long-term". As workers are forced to go from one job to another, the new capitalism increases the risk of the workers in choosing employment, while it robs them of the sense of security enjoyed previously and, in Sennett's words, corrodes their character. The book covers the trends and nuances of the new capitalism and with many examples illustrates the decline of job security of both workers and managers, the fact that the fastest growing sector of the labor force is those working on temporary jobs, often called "permatemps", and that the frequent turnover in employment increases the risk of choosing a career or even a job. Richard Sennett correctly concludes that the new order does indeed corrode the worker's character.