INSKEEP: You write that Google chose not to comply with regulatory restrictions, and so their business has been severely restricted in China. But if we actually look at the data in China, the foreign companies actually get more subsidies than domestic companies. And I'm not saying that there are no discriminations against foreign companies. Of course, there are information-related companies like Google and Facebook that has met with challenges, restrictions, outright bans, etc. Apple did super well, and it continues to thrive. Same thing with eBay, which it drove out. Amazon didn't do so well, not because of discrimination but because Alibaba is very powerful, and it caters to the Chinese tastes.

If we take the automotive industry or the mobile phone industry, I'd say that in many of these at least consumer-oriented sectors, it's just about competition. JIN: There are lots of Western firms that have succeeded in all sectors, with the exception of the sensitive ones or the strategically important ones of the government, where there's restrictions on foreign investment. American business leaders complain of unfair competition in China. And when it's not, entrepreneurs often push it to change.

But she maintains the state apparatus has often been very smart economically. Americans think about the overpowering bureaucracy of the Communist state, which is true. In fact, she argues that Americans get a lot of things subtly wrong. 'The New China Playbook' offers a different perspective than many Western policymakers do about China. INSKEEP: She teaches now at the London School of Economics, and she has written a book about the economic development of her native country. INSKEEP: And you ended up going to college in the United States, as well, right? for high school as a Chinese exchange student when I was 14. KEYU JIN: I grew up in Beijing, but I chose to go to the U.S. The writer and scholar Keyu Jin has a foot in each of two worlds.

Her story download