Growing China

The American Dream is close to being replaced by a living nightmare. Key commodities that are essential to our daily lives and that are widely believed to be abundant are running critically short. Even worse, the Chinese are doing what they can to monopolize the world's dwindling resources. The U.S. is now largely dependent on our greatest economic rival for rare earth elements as well as a host of other minerals - all of which are absolutely essential to the development of alternative energies....

A snobbish French executive arrives in Shanghai with his expensive shoes and ties, expecting a short career-boosting posting before returning to Paris. Instead, he ends up deep in China's manure-soaked fields, buying and selling vegetables, all because he has convinced himself that he can single-handedly drag Chinese agriculture into the 21st century. It didn't work out as he planned. The Lettuce Diaries is a revealing and humorous memoir of entrepreneurship, doubling as a primer on doing business in China, and explaining things the French executive only learned the hard way.

Gupta and Wang explain how many MNCs view China and India solely from the lens of off-shoring and cost-reduction, and focusing their marketing strategies on only the top 5-10% of the population. This is a missed opportunity. China and India are the only two countries that constitute four realities that are strategically crucial for the global enterprise.

This is the captivating story of Xiaomei Martell, who was born in one of China’s most remote regions just two years before Mao launched the Cultural Revolution. The youngest of four daughters her name means ‘Little Sister’ her family had no money or connections, yet they raised her with a thirst for knowledge and a love of food, ranging from the Lion’s Head meatballs her Uncle Deng cooked to the ‘phoenix feet’ that apparently cured wrinkles, by way of hundred-year-old eggs.

In a small village called Yellow Stone, below the mountains of southeastern China, Sisi is a model sister, daughter, and student. She brews tea for her grandfather in the morning, leads recitations at school as class monitor, and helps care for her youngest brother, Da. But when students are selected during a school ceremony to join the prestigious Red Guard, Sisi is passed over. Worse, she is shamed for her family’s past - they are former landowners who have no place in the new Communist order.

It's common knowledge that China has the fastest-growing economy in the world. What is not common knowledge is exactly how Western companies can gain a foothold and increase their profits by doing business inside this next great superpower. Now, respected business journalist Ted Plafker has written a fully detailed, yet user-friendly, handbook on how individuals and companies can succeed in this challenging and often confusing environment.