What's Happening in China

I think by now we all know that China is a place we should care about -- lots of people, lots of money & lots of things being produced.  But, let's be honest, it can be pretty hard to grasp what's really going on.  It's a HUGE place with oddly only one timezone.

Over the weekend, I read "The One Hour China Book", and per it's namesake, it actually does an excellent job describing the current situation in China in about 60 to 90 minutes.  It's written by a consultant and a banker, but they actually do a good job of using simple (not business jargon) language. 

Essentially, there are 6 mega trends behind what's driving the Chinese economy:

1. Urbanization
2. Manufacturing at Scale
3. Rising Chinese Consumers
4. Money, Money, Money
5. The Brainpower Behemoth
6. The Chinese Internet

If you can understand those 6 points, you'll know a hell of a lot more about China than you did before.  

Here's a few points I found especially interesting in the book:

• There will soon be 1 BILLION city dwellers in China (in 1980, only 20% of the population lived in cities).  That means that Chinese cities will have more people than North and South America combined.
• There's a lot of big cities that we've never heard of.  In fact, right now, there are 160 cities in China with over 1M people; this is expected to grow to 220 by 2025.  China contains 40% of all the world's cities with over 5M people.
• China is the world's largest manufacturer valued at $2.2 trillion per year (40% of the Chinese GDP).  It's moved from toys and clothes to high tech manufacturing.  If you remember correctly, this is how America came to economic power in the 1900s by manufacturing goods, especially after WWII.  Or, more recently, it's the same move that South Korea made over the last two decades.
• China has 73 companies on the Fortune 500 list, which makes it the #2 country after the United States.  What's more interesting is that very few of these companies are "household" names in the West.
• Asia Pacific represents 18% of the world's middle class today, but is predicted to represent 66% by 2030.  I guess it's a good thing that I live in Asia ;)

I could go on and on, but I'll spare you my nerdiness.  The book is $3.99 on the Kindle, which is the same prices as a latte.  I say skip the Starbucks for a day and pick this up instead.