Most discussions of the global financial crisis take the United States as their focus, both for analyzing what went wrong and for making plans to avoid similar mistakes in the future. But that may not be the case next time: as Minq Li argues convincingly in China and the Twenty-first-Century Crisis, by the time of inevitable next crisis, China will likely be at the epicenter.
 
Li roots his argument in an analysis of the political and economic imbalances in China that would exacerbate a crisis, and possibly even precipitate a full collapse—and he shows in detail the reasons why that collapse could happen much more quickly than anyone imagines. Writing from a Marxist and ecologically oriented perspective, Li shows unequivocally that the limits to capitalism are fast approaching, and that events in China—essentially the last great frontier for capitalist expansion—are likely to be pivotal.

Minq Li teaches economics at the University of Utah and is the author of The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy, also published by Pluto.

— Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University

— Martin Hart-Landsberg, Lewis and Clark College

— John Bellamy Foster, University of Oregon

— Choice