Your nice Gap wool coat --- made in China;

Your 700 MB-pixel Sony W-7 Digital Camera --- made in China;

Your Dell laptop extension cord and battery set --- made in China;

Your new Volvo's fuel pump --- made in China

Your slick Nokia 8801 cell phone --- made in China...

picture above: P&G manufacturing in GuangZhou (from P&G china website) picture below: Microsoft China R&D center members (from Microsoft china website)

True, that China has been benefiting tremendously from a globalized economy and more foreign direct and indirect investments; that China's economic growth has been stunning and outperformed any other country for such sustained period of time. However, for a country with 1.3 billion people, two thirds of which are farmers living in rural areas; a country with an emerging middle class along the coastal areas, in sharp contrast with the impoverished inhabitants in the hinterland; a country with a financial system in transition and a much-critisized social health-care system, any small problem can be magnified with a multiple of 1.3 billion, leading to uncertainty about the possibility of economic hard-landing and large-scale social unrest.

This website is a brief examination of the challenges that China faces in the era of globalization. Following the navigation bar on the left, after providing some quick facts about China and its current economic environment, we will focus on the widening wealth gap between the rural and urban regions, intertwined with problems of appalling working conditions, lack of social health care and an unprecedented urban migration. We will also propose some policy recommendations. We hope this website will serve as a starting point for the aware and the unaware to take a closer and more rational look at this country, and its problems with the unique "Chinese characteristics" hidden behind the current Go-CHINA craze.