How to Profit in the World's Fastest Growing Market
By Ted Plafker

Warner Business Books (2007), 304 pages

With the exploding number of business-in-China-themed books these days, it's hard to tell one from another, and this book is doing itself no favours with the title - there must now be dozens, if not hundreds, of similarly titled books with red covers and yellow lettering on the shop shelves. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, Plafker, a former Beijing correspondent for The Economist who has been in China since 1989, goes easy on the hyperbole and writes with an accessible style recognisable to those who are familiar with the magazine. The book is aimed primarily at rank newcomers: Plafker lays out the basics of the industries he believes are ripest for investment, gives a primer on legal and regulatory issues affecting business and discusses the cultural aspects of, well, doing business in China. Along the way, he dispels common myths about China and recaps the important points at the end of each chapter.

Dragons at Your Door:

How Chinese Cost Innovation is Disrupting Global Innovation
By Ming Zeng and Peter J. Williamson

Harvard Business School Press (2007), 256 pages

Dragons at Your Door takes a look at how China came to dominate so many world markets so quickly - and so unexpectedly. The authors, business professors at Li Ka-shing's Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business and Fontainebleau- and Singapore-based Insead, find that the reasons go beyond a large and inexpensive labour force. The three keys to China's cost innovation, they argue, are its ability to make high-tech goods at low cost, offer a wider range of choice than any competitor and make "speciality products' at volume prices. With their low cost structures, Chinese companies have been able to enter markets and come to dominate them by exploiting "loose bricks' - market segments where they have an advantage - and then force competitors to retreat and advance into more specialised, high-margin areas.