The Chinese Dream: The Rise of the World's Largest Middle Class and What It Means to You

2nd Edition: July 6, 2012 - In The Chinese Dream, a groundbreaking book about the rising middle class in China, the award-winning author Helen H. Wang challenges us to recognize that some of our fears about China are grossly misplaced. As a result of China's new capitalist paradigm, a burgeoning middle class-calculated to reach 800 million within the next fifteen years-is jumping aboard the consumerism train and riding it for all it's worth-a reality that may provide the answer to America's economic woes. And with China's increasing urbanization and top-down governmental approach, it now faces increasing energy, environmental, and health problems-problems that the U.S. can help solve. Through timely interviews, personal stories, and a historical perspective, China-born Wang takes us into the world of the Chinese entrepreneurial middle class to show how a growing global mindset and the realization of unity in diversity may ultimately provide the way to creating a saner, safer world for all.

• Deconstructs the myths about China as a superpower and global manufacturing power
• Takes us into the world of the driven middle class and shows how the not-so-private sector operates
• Provides a historical perspective on China and examines the possibility of democracy in China's future
• Shows how a mindset that embraces the idea of unity in diversity could help solve China and America's growing energy, health, and environmental problems

Through this eye-opening book, Wangwidens our understanding of China today and shows how this new class of upwardly mobile young people, who have modern ambitions and a growing global consciousness, are beginning to drive China toward a new and different future.

To gain a clear view of the impact of this new middle class, Wang provides us with interviews of executives of foreign-owned firms, connected Communist party members, rural migrants who are seeing their dreams of a better life come to fruition, and young entrepreneurs who are becoming increasingly westernized, consuming as fast as the money pours in. She alsoprovides uswith a careful analysis of the social and political forces at work in society, as she takes us on a journey to many places in China that reflect her own life-changing experiences.