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The author describes the current Chinese economic situation by providing a realistic and fresh point of view. Dinny covers many aspects such as Demography, investments, and debt. I liked the references to the additional reading material.

This is a well researched account of some of the most urgent economic issues facing China, by a financial journalist who has spent many years living there. How China faces the hurdles before it will have important implications for the rest of the world. This book is a much needed wake up call about the fragility of China's remarkable economic success.

I have to admit that my understanding of the contemporary Chinese economy is limited to a few media cliches which portray China as simultaneously threat and saviour. They are taking our jobs. They are buying up our strategic assets. They are making friends worldwide while the West makes only enemies. They are a nation of savers, not borrowers. Their investment keeps our fragile economies afloat. Chinese consumers will save us from our next recession.

This book presents a more realistic appraisal of the state of the Chinese economy. Each chapter focuses on a different area, to show how corruption, lies and the endless accumulation of debt are fuelling both private and public expansion in areas from local government to housing to financial services. This is a balanced analysis by someone with a strong knowledge of the country. For example while he laments new towns that have been built to no clear purpose and remain largely unoccupied, the author also acknowledges that massive urbanisation has taken place in China without the vast slums and favelas of comparable countries.

He wisely avoids specific predictions about the future (there is a sense that 'this can't go on forever' but we've been saying that about the London property market for years and it still does) but he does end by considering the impact of Chinese consumers on the West and how over-reliance on the ?Chinese to solve our problems may be misguided.

If I had one criticism, it would be that I'd have liked less anecdote and more analysis, but overall this is a useful introduction to the general reader who wants to understand more about the workings of the Chinese economy and its effect on the rest of the world.

A must-read book for anyone who is interested in China's place in the global economy. I found the discussion of how debt fuels China's growth to be fascinating - and put into perspective the construction projects we saw when we visited China 3 years ago. It will be very interesting to see whether China can continue its rapid growth (assuming the numbers are real) and what will happen when the music stops. I'm most interested in seeing if the author's prediction that "next time it will be different" comes to pass.

“Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent”, a quote persistently misattributed to the economist John Maynard Keynes, seems the most appropriate comment for this book.

Like a strapless dress, the Chinese economy shouldn’t stay up, but it stays up. The Coming Collapse of China (widely read at publication) predicted the end of the bubble in 2001, and then again in a revised edition in 2012, yet there the bubble still is with us in 2018, big as life and twice as ugly.

This readable and entertaining book wisely avoids getting tangled up in specific dates, but it asks, rhetorically, “How long can this go on?” The author piles on convincing anecdotes about the unwise misallocation of resources by those seek to seek rents, get rich quick, and/or just plain please their bosses. Housing estates sit empty. Zombie state banks fund zombie state enterprises. Accounting tricks and financial legerdemain produce a falsely rosy picture. State funds are syphoned off so executives and bureaucrats can have fancy water fountains, second homes, and expensive wardrobes. Entrenched state-run monopolies protect themselves to the detriment of the public good.

I especially enjoyed the part of this book about China’s salt monopoly -- its genesis as an attempt to protect the health of the masses, its eventual capture by the wealthy and powerful, and its current role as a well-funded and devious roadblock to reform.

The anecdotes about the results of China’s lunatic economic policies are well-written and illuminating, but there’s no evidence that now is the time it will transform itself into a smoldering ruin. There must be books about exactly how bubbles happen, but this is not one of them.

Also, the author says: “[I]t’s almost inconceivable that China’s economic problems could spill over into mass unrest, or at least the sort of unrest the government would be unable to control” (Kindle location 2834).

I have had the pleasure of living in foreign countries (that is, outside the USA), although never in China. One of the many enjoyable things about expatriate living is that you see that, in many ways, other countries have problems even more ridiculously intractable than our own. Of course, this is not to say that other people’s problems are enjoyable, but it counteracts the persistent paranoid drumbeat of the US media (consumed eagerly by those ready to assume the worse) that the rest of the world is about to eat our lunch. The world is not about to eat our lunch. The world has its own problems. The fact that the problems of totalitarian dictatorships are often better concealed only means that they may be allowed to become enormous and unfixable by the time they no longer can be concealed from the public.

I received an free unfinished galley of the ebook for review. Thank you to Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for their generosity.