The Rise of China: How Economic Reform Is Creating a New Superpower

China, the world's fastest growing economy, is eliminating poverty while achieving huge trade surpluses and creating a vast new class of consumers open to liberal ideas, reports Overholt, managing director of Bankers Trust in Hong Kong. His detailed economic and political analysis portrays Deng Xiaoping as a master strategist who is using rapid economic growth and gradual privatization to build a consensus around stability, arguing that an immediate move towards a Western market-style economy would likely be disastrous for the People's Republic. Overholt, who cofounded the journal Global Political Assessment with Zbigniew Brzezinski, maintains that the U.S. should pressure China for reforms of its trade policy, arms sales and human rights abuses but still grant the country most-favored-nation trade status. Continuing along this path of economic development will create an educated citizenry and wider freedoms, contends Overholt, and provide the best hope for transforming authoritarian China into a democracy. (Nov.)