Back in the early 1980s, when the Japanese economy was on a roll, the number of books, journal and media articles extolling its strength and impact  became  almost a weekly staple of  publication  that the late Dr. Hadi Soesastro remarked  at a CSIS Jakarta  seminar “I’m going to commit suicide if another speaker is going talk again about the virtues of  Japanese economic model.”

It is with the same sense of measured reluctance   that I read through   China’s Rise by Gary Schmitt,  China Megatrends by John Naisbitt and  When China Rules the World by Martin Jacques. All this  after scanning through The Beijing Consensus by Stephen Halper and, tellingly, during China’s current troubles facing devastating floods, landslides, acute rural and urban problems and lowered pace of economic growth.

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