China Dawn: The Story of Technology and Business Revolution

David Sheff

Mar 2009 · Harper Collins

About this ebook

Imagine living through the breakthrough moments of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and the other icons of today's new economy. The kind of technological revolution that they led in Silicon Valley is now sweeping through China, but with much more dramatic implications. The dynamic entrepreneurs who are using technology to radically transform business and cultural life in China are fighting not only outdated business models and a tumultuous economy but also an unpredictable government that has a love-hate relationship with the Net, at once pushing its expansion at a feverish pace and censoring it. As Duncan Clark, cofounder of BDA, an Internet consulting company in Beijing, told author David Sheff, "This environment -- the regulations, the competition, the political uncertainties -- makes these the fastest, most courageous, nimblest-thinking people globally. To deal with this level of risk and still sleep is no small accomplishment. But they're hooked on it like some Chinese are becoming hooked on Starbucks cappuccino."

In this irresistible, groundbreaking book, Sheff takes us into the trenches of the Chinese technology revolution, introducing the major and minor players who are leading China into the twenty-first century. Players like Bo Feng, the charismatic former sushi chef who is now one of the leading venture capitalists in China. And Edward Tian, a national hero who has been described as China's Steve Jobs and Bill Gates combined, who left his own start-up on the eve of its IPO in order to lead the government's attempt to bring broadband to the entire nation, in the process leapfrogging the United States, Europe, and the rest of Asia with the longest and fastest network in the world.

As the U.S. technological revolution wanes, business leaders will be looking to the billion-plus potential customers in China for new growth. In addition, the world's newest member of the World Trade Organization will no longer be a bystander in the global economy; it will be a fierce competitor. And when hundreds of million Chinese have access to unprecedented information and communication, China itself will be profoundly altered. Jay Chang, an analyst who covers China for Credit Suisse First Boston, sums the seismic nature of the changes: "What happens when China successfully transforms from a mainly agrarian/industrial nation into one that has significant input from the information technology industry? What happens when eighty percent of the state-owned enterprises in China are able to link economically to the global Internet on fast pipes? What happens when China's engineering talent pool is able to gain access to high-end computing resources and exchange ideas and information easily with their global peers? What happens when fifty percent of the Chinese population gets wired in ten years -- six hundred million people, the largest number of Internet users in the world?" With its compelling, character-driven story, researched over the course of three years, China Dawn will be the definitive book on the subject.

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About the author

There is a new revolution in China, one which intends to unite the people of this vast and populous nation as never before; both highways, roadways and the information superhighway, are being constructed simultaneously, leapfrogging a rural economy into the modern-day information age. "In China, I feel the explosive combination of forces aligning to create the kind of change that alters the course of history," writes David Sheff in the introduction to China Dawn, his latest book. About the entrepreneurs who are trying to spark a social transformation by bringing the latest information technology to the planet's most populous country, China Dawn, researched over three years, is the chronicle of the nascent Chinese technology revolution -- a movement with, Sheff says, "the immodest goal of transforming the life of more than a fifth of the world's people."

David Sheff's articles and interviews have appeared in Playboy, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Wired, Outside, Forbes ASAP, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Esquire and Observer Magazine in England, Foreign Literature in Russia and Playboy (Shueisha) in Japan. He is currently on assignment for Fortune and Vanity Fair. His book, Game Over, was published by Random House in the United States and Hodder and Stoughton in Great Britain as well as in Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Brazil, Israel, and other countries. Vintage published the paperback edition in 1993. The book, reissued in 1999 with a new introduction, was universally praised by reviewers for Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Forbes, USA Today, The New York Review of Books, and hundreds of domestic and international magazines and newspapers. The New York Times called it "beguiling" and "irresistible. . . almost as hypnotic as a successful video game." The Houston Chronicle said, "This book is a must-read. Game Over is about as readable as a business book can be." The Chicago Tribune called it "A cross between Barbarians at the Gate and The Soul of the New Machine."

The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, conducted in 1980, became a Literary Guild Selection book. Other interviews, including those with Ansel Adams, nuclear physicist Ted Taylor, Gore Vidal, Steve Jobs, Tom Hanks, Sting, Scott Peck, Betty Friedan, and Keith Haring, received wide recognition, as did his "Portrait of a Generation" in Rolling Stone. His radio documentaries for National Public Radio on John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird won several awards. He also wrote and edited "Heart Play: Unfinished Dialogue," which won a Grammy Award nomination for Best Spoken Word Recording of 1984.

Sheff is currently a contributing editor of Playboy, Wired, and Yahoo! Internet Life and is on assignment for Fortune and Vanity Fair. He was formerly an editor of New West and California magazines..

He attended the University of California at Berkeley, where he received a degree in social science. He lives in San Francisco, California with his wife and three children.