Has China Devised a Superior Path to Wealth Creation? The Role of Secular Values

Book excerpt: The rise of China will profoundly change the world, and the rest of us now have a chance to understand how and why this is happening, or continue to moralise about this “disaster”, thought to harm our way of life. What is especially galling is that the Chinese appear better able to create wealth and value than the West. Even in the midst of political denunciations, more and more businesses are profitably engaging China. We have to face the fact that China excels at what we are supposed to admire, the peaceful creation of wealth. It even withstands the current pandemic several hundred times more successfully than we have. The answers to China’s success lie not in “communism” but in Chinese civilization and culture which is 22 centuries old and extends to most of East Asia, and has traded peacefully since Roman times. This is a book about measured business cultures, East and West, and explains, using largely Western scholarship, why China is winning and will continue to do so unless and until we wake up.