Introduction
One Country, Three Centuries
C
hina’s breathtaking transformation from a
command to a market-socialist economy over
the past twenty-five years has turned some 300
million of its 1.3 billion people into ravenous consumers of
everything from candy to cars. And until twenty-five years
ago, almost none of them had ever eaten a piece of chocolate.
They were, to coin a phrase, ‘‘chocolate virgins,’’ their taste for
chocolate ready to be shaped by whichever chocolate com-
pany came roaring into the country with a winning combina-
tion of quality, marketing savvy, and manufacturing and
distribution acumen. In short, China was the next great fron-
tier, a market of almost limitless potential to be conquered in
a war between the world’s leading chocolate ...