John and Doris Naisbitt, longtime China observers, provide an in-depth study of the fundamental changes in China’s social, political, and economic life, and their impact on the West.

With extraordinary access, and using the same techniques behind John Naisbitt’s international bestseller Megatrends, the Naisbitts have traveled the country, interviewing journalists, entrepreneurs, academics, politicians, artists, dissidents, and expatriates. With the help of twenty-eight staff members of the Naisbitt China Institute in Tianjin, they have monitored local newspapers in all of China’s provinces to identify the evolving perspectives and deep forces underlying China’s transformation. Their research reveals that China is not only undergoing fundamental changes but also creating an entirely new social and economic model—what the Naisbitts call a “vertical democracy”—that is changing the rules of global trade and challenging Western democracy as the only acceptable form of governing.

The Naisbitts have identified 8 pillars as the foundation and drivers of China’s new society:

• Emancipation of the Mind
• Balancing Top-Down and Bottom-Up
• Framing the Forest and Letting the Trees Grow
• Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones
• Artistic and Intellectual Ferment
• Joining the World
• Freedom and Fairness
• From Olympic Medals to Nobel Prizes

Examining each of these 8 pillars in great detail, China’s Megatrends describes the new China for the knowledgeable and the newly curious, offering fresh and provocative insights and lessons to be learned.