Edited 1 July 06
On 14 June the EUCCC organized a breakfast event to let James introduce his book. Yeah, I know, one more.
I know James from the times he still was with the Financial Times and also bugged me (in a friendly way) as a journalist.

His book is said to be “an authorative account by leading China expert on how China’s economic rise and how it will affect the world”. The China Economic review in its June edition gave a positive report on the book – so did China Daily on 19 June on the front page – another glowing review.
I don’t completely agree with all of James’ statements but he makes many sharp and straight to the point observations leaning on his long experience dealing with China. He talks with a lot of humor – and modesty – setting him apart from the many so-called China specialists who think they understand China and all others have no clue.
James lists some of the strengths of China as well as some of the potential risk factors. Here I would add some more. We see fortress Europe and fortress USA against China’s rising economic trade volume but he did not talk about fortress China – many observers share the sentiment China is becoming more protective and trying to erect new barriers for foreign companies.
He also mentioned China is very closely following the western world in advanced technologies such as in the semiconductor industry. Here is were I tend to disagree – exactly in the IC industry China has been investing heavily but still fails to develop cutting edge technologies, one can even say China has a lot of catching up to do. Just look at a recent scandal where the darling researcher in the IC industry had to admit his new IC was just a recooked US chip – Chen Jing placed his company’s logos on several Motorola MOTO chips and claimed them as his own. As a consequence he was fired by Shanghai Jiaotong University.
Not to mention the development of mobile terminals – Motorola and Nokia again increasing their market share through their intensified R&D and marketing efforts after ceding grounds a few years ago to the myriad of local manufacturers. At one point it looked like foreign suppliers would become irrelevant. Not yet!
All in all, looks like a very interesting piece of work what James came up with. Now James, you have to improve your sales skills and carry some of your books for sale, so I can buy an autographed one from you.