It is foolish to make concrete predictions about China, due to how often – and how quickly – the country has been proving people wrong
Very occasionally, though, I feel something is such a sure bet that I’m ready to go out on a limb and describe something I’m sure will occur. Here’s my latest example: in the upcoming year or two, we’ll see a lot of new general interest books on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) show up at online sites like Amazon.com and in brick and mortar bookstores. I’ll go further than this and predict that the books will be by varied kinds of authors, from freelance writers to pundits, daily journalists to scholars, like me, who often write for specialized audiences but have decided to try to reach that elusive general educated reader. And one further point, of particular relevance to readers of this site: these books, while focusing on the present, will often make at least some nods to the past, in order to place recent events into historical perspective.