#Book 2 on The China Project Ultimate China Bookshelf – Joe Studwell’s The China Dream

Book #2 on my Ultimate China Bookshelf pairs with book #1 (despite a 65 year gap), Carl Crow’s 400 Million Customers (1937) – Joe Studwell’s The China Dream (2002)…

If the broader message of our first entrant on the Ultimate China Bookshelf, Carl Crow’s 400 Million Customers, was the importance of retaining a foreign collective memory of China’s past, then Joe Studwell’s The China Dream, is in many ways an echo of Crow’s appeal for business people to be realistic when they approached the China market. The “China Dream” (predating Xi Jinping’s own version by a decade) was good – inspiring, challenging, hopeful. But ultimately today’s unrealistic dreams led to tomorrow’s nightmares.