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Harvard Business Review's October issue has a great 30+ page spotilght called China Tomorrow. The first pages are filled with the hard numbers I was looking for, as three weeks ago I found myself unable to explain exactly why and how China was becoming the next world superpower. Everything I'd read and everyone I'd talked to who's been to Shanghai knows- but how do you prove it to someone that watches Sex in the City reruns twice daily? I'm sure she blew my fact-less rantings off as potspeak, but now I'm armed.

China's overall record since reforms began in 1979 is dazzling, and its performance is in many ways improving. Annual real GDP has grown about 9% a year, on average, since 1978- an aggregate increase of some 700%. Foreign trade growth has averaged nearly 15% over the same period, or more than 2,700% in aggregate. Foreign direct investment has flooded into the country, especially through the past decade. In 2002, China became the first country since the 1980s to attract more FDI in a year than the United States (brining in $53.2 billion while $52.7 billion flowed into the States). (emphasis mine) In the first quarter of 2003, a billion dollars a month in foreign capital poured into the Pearl River Delta near Hong Kong, where integrated clusters of suppliers and assemblers are becoming an awesomely efficient manufacturing base for exports of everything from circuit boards to machinery to shoes to tools. Led by businesses there, China has rapidly moved to take its place among the world's largest trading nations.