Standing on the Sun

CHAPTER ONE

Capitalism's New Center of Gravity

The shifting environment of the global economy

In the 21st century, history will unfold in the exact opposite direction of what Western intellectuals anticipated in 1991. Then they all assumed that the end of history is the triumph of the West. Instead, we will now see that the return of history is the retreat of the West.

—Kishore Mahubani, author of The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, April 2009

It was 1997, and Chris was visiting Beijing for the first time. He was lucky to have a guide, the son of a Chinese colleague, who was both bilingual and bicultural; the twenty-something entrepreneur had spent his teenage years in California. On the tortuous drive ...