Stumbling giant

While dozens of recent books and articles have predicted the near-certainty of China's rise to global supremacy, this book boldly counters such widely-held assumptions. Timothy Beardson brings to light the daunting array of challenges that today confront China, as well as the inadequacy of leadership's responses. Threats to China come from many fronts, Beardson shows, and by their number and sheer weight these problems will thwart the nation's ambition to take over as the world's "Number 1 power". Drawing on extensive research and experience living and working in Asia over the last 35 years, the author spells out the details of China's situation: an inexorable demographic future of remorseless aging, extreme gender disparity, a shrinking labour force, and even a falling population. Also, the nation faces social instability, a devastated environment, a low-tech economy with inadequate innovation, the absence of an effective welfare safety net, an ossified governance structure, and radical Islam lurking at the borders. Beardson's nuanced, first-hand look at China acknowledges its historic achievements while tempering predictions of its imminent hegemony with a no-nonsense dose of reality.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.