An analysis of the causes and consequences of China's transformation from a minor player to the world's tenth largest trader in less than two decades. It locates the transformation in the synergy created by new forces unleashed in China and their interaction with entrepreneurs in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, who invested capital, transferred production facilities and provided the marketing channels by which Chinese goods reached world markets. The book also examines the dynamics behind Japan's increasing role in China's foreign trade in the late 1990s and the growing trade friction between China and the United States, which it argues is produced by the failure of the latter to recognise the dynamics of China's export growth.