Book review: Can China Lead?

Here, three senior US academics who have spent a lot of time studying China argue that China is at an inflection point, with changes in its economic path that will play out in the coming decades.

The authors highlight the importance of this for leaders looking to assess their own strategies for doing business in China, and, with or against, the growing number of Chinese competitors both private and state-owned, now operating successfully around the globe.

Acknowledging the huge economic advances made, the authors note the one important area where China has not developed – its political system has changed little in recent decades.

The authors assess the political reasons that led the Communist Party to push institutional change in specific directions, resulting in increasingly unsustainable patterns of economic growth and dangerous levels of economic inequality.

While there is a robust private sector in China, it is limited in scope to sectors of the economy still monopolised by state-owned corporations. Research and development cannot flourish if fears of intellectual property theft persist, they argue.