The ascent of China's economy over the past forty years may be one of the more remarkable happenings in human history. Few understand it. Those outside China consider the massive changes a mystery. Those inside China have been challenged with taking more than 1.3 billion people from an agrarian existence into the modern world, and in the face of complex economics involving extreme conflicts of interest. Nobody ever did it before; nobody will ever do it again. Given the convulsive upheavals required, the difficulty of the task has been, and remains, hard to imagine. This book describes those up.

Cover -- Titlepage -- TABLE OF CONTENTS -- Author Introduction -- Insert -- Preface -- Part One The Beginning 1978-1983 -- Deng Opens the Door to the World -- Where Will the Money Come from? -- Shenzhen Special Economic Zone -- Reform at Capital Steel -- Shooting Stars in the Countryside -- Part Two Commotion and Tumult 1984-1992 -- 1984, the ""Founding Year"" of Major Chinese Enterprises -- A Two-track Pricing Policy and a Trip to Hainan Island -- Allowing Prices to ""Break through the Pass -- Harnessing and Rectifying -- Part Three Radical Dreams 1993-1997
Ruling over Chaos with an ""Iron Wrist -- Price Wars -- Becoming One of the Fortune 500 -- Unexpected Changes -- Part Four Swamps and Landmines 1998-2002 -- Some Hairpins -- The Birthing of the Stock Market, and Its Chronic Problems -- Stride on over the Rainbow -- The China Threat -- Part Five Responsibility and Reason 2003-2007 -- SARS, Housing Bubbles, Electricity Panics -- Trade Frictions -- Internet Economics -- Great Nation Passion -- Part Six The Bigger the Pond, the Bigger the Fish 2008-2018 -- 2008: An Uncertain Beginning -- 2009: The Cost of V-shaped Bounce -- 2010: Surpassing Japan
2011: Will China Break? -- 2012: The End of the First Half -- 2013: Sleepless Money -- 2014: Return of the Bubble -- 2015: The Year of Extremes -- 2016: The Black Swan Is Flying -- 2017: Arrival of the New Middle-class Era -- 2018: The 40th Year of China's Reform -- Copyright -- Backcover