In her brisk and flattering analysis of China's charge into the high-tech market, Fannin spotlights 12 Eastern “technopreneurs” who are giving Silicon Valley mainstays a run for their money. Identifying her profile subjects “the next Thomas Edison” or “the next Rupert Murdoch,” and their companies as “MySpace China” and the like, the former Red Herring
news editor supports her observational thesis with data and anecdotes from a variety of Western and Eastern CEOs, professors and financial analysts. Drawing parallels between the “Middle Kingdom's” growth and the height of the dot-com bubble, Fannin also takes care to note that most of her China-born “sea turtles'” were educated in the West, but returned to their homeland to take advantage of growing markets there. If anything, her writing overly praises Chinese entrepreneurships' reach in the world, choosing to gloss over negative statistics and paying controversial social issues—such as censorship of China's Internet sites—mere lip service. Overall, Fannin is best at tracing her subject's mostly humble beginnings through Mao's Cultural Revolution to the self-made Internet era as the tech world searches for the next Bill Gates. Given the sheer number of Chinese expected to be alive in the next decade, new media moguls (and profitable IPOs) are inevitable. (Feb.)
