At the beginning of this timely book, James Kynge describes how a steel company situated at a small port on the lower Yangtze River bought a whole steel mill from the Thyssen Krupp company in Germany and transported it all the way to China. There, it was reassembled and began producing steel, which is crucial for China's development. The company that bought the mill is called Shagang, or "sand steel." Altogether, a total of 275,000 tons of equipment and 44 tons of documents with instructions on reassembling the steel mill were shipped to China. More than 1,000 Chinese workers were sent to the German city of Horde in the Ruhr region to disassemble the mill, piece by piece. They finished the work in one year. Shagang bought the mill for 12 million dollars - a good deal for the German company. The work was completed ahead of time and the Chinese crew returned home. If Shagang had bought new equipment for a steel mill instead, the cost would have been many times greater.

China has moved from rags to riches in just a few decades. As an economic powerhouse, China is reaching to all corners of the world in search of natural resources, from oil to steel, to feed its ever expanding economy. It is shaking the world, the author says. James Kynge spent years in China, first as a student and then as a reporter for the Financial Times. China has used its own natural resources to build a strong economy. But it is destroying its environment and its people at the same time. One example is the coal mine in Anyuan in Jiangxi province where, decades ago, Mao Tsetung led the revolutionary army to take over the country. This mine was once the main source of fuel for industries along the Yangtze River. But the author says the region around the mine is now a desolate place where the unemployed roam the streets. The mine has been emptied.

Many places throughout China have suffered the same fate. In its rush to catch up with the rest of the world in economic development, China has exploited its natural resources and destroyed much of the environment. At the same time, population growth has outstripped natural resources. China has been trying to catch up with market economies and use an American model of economic development in order to achieve wealth and prestige. It has built an infrastructure modeled on US-style highways. It has dreamed of sending children to Western universities and establishing a consumer and middle class to equal that of the US or Europe. The author says, however, that China's efforts to try to look like the US and consume like Americans in China's early stages of growth have not succeeded. China has failed because the world doesn't have enough resources to meet the demands of 1.3 billion Chinese.

China's failures to achieve a capitalist market economy similar to the West and to build a strong and equal society are caused by its political system. The author says China tries to run a sophisticated capitalist economy with a political system that is dominated by a single source of authority that must be obeyed - the Communist Party. "The main problem in China's political system is that it does not permit the checks and balances necessary to supervise and regulate a capitalist economy in an efficient manner," the author says. "A communist political system is engineered to venerate and sustain a single source of authority." The author gives a thorough analysis of a situation in which China tries to blend communism and democracy together in order to achieve a world-class economy. But Beijing authorities have failed, because the Communist Party system cannot accept democratic principles and institutions. Corruption is another major problem in China, the author says.

Can China make friends with the rest of the world, the author wonders. Despite efforts to reach out to foreign countries and governments, Chinese views of the world have not changed, he says. China is now making an effort to welcome foreigners as it prepares to hold the Summer Olympic Games in 2008. But school textbooks still teach children to beware of foreigners.