Books: Mr. China Hits the Road

Among several brilliantly drawn characters is a bureaucrat--"the chief engineer of the First Light Industry Bureau" of the Beijing city government--a Madame Wu Hongbo, otherwise known to Clissold as "my old Chinese sparring partner." The accounts of his tangles with her--she "regulates" the Chinese partner with which Pat has bought a beer company--are hilarious, and sobering.

China is now moving so fast economically that, strange as it sounds, some of the events in the book already seem a bit dated. China's joining the WTO has injected some order into foreign investment, and more foreign companies are setting up wholly owned subsidiaries instead of headache- inducing joint ventures. No matter. For anyone interested in the new China--and that's a rapidly expanding universe in the U.S.--Mr. China is indispensable.