LOS ANGELES, August 1, 2013 — China scholars Orville Schell, Geoffrey Cowan and Clayton Dube discussed Orville Schell's new book Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century.

About WEALTH & POWER

Through a series of absorbing portraits of iconic modern Chinese leaders and thinkers, two of today’s foremost specialists on China provide a panoramic narrative of the nation’s ascent from imperial doormat to global economic powerhouse in WEALTH AND POWER: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century (Random House; On Sale: 7/16/13).

The basic facts of China’s rise to preeminence over the past three decades are well documented, but how did this erstwhile sleeping giant finally manage to arrive at its current phase of dynamic growth? How, after such a long and painful period of dynastic decline, intellectual upheaval and revolution, foreign occupation and civil war, did a country once derided as the “sick man of Asia” manage to break out of its old pattern of repeatedly failed reform efforts to burst forth onto the world stage with such an impressive run of hyperdevelopment and wealth creation?

By unwrapping the intellectual antecedents of today’s resurgent China, Orville Schell and John Delury supply much-needed insight into the country’s tortured progression from nineteenth-century decline to twenty-first-century boom. By looking backward into the past to understand forces at work for hundreds of years, they help us understand China today and the future that this singular country is helping shape for all of us. Click here to enjoy an excerpt from the book.