Last night in Chipping Norton I heard a fascinating account of Chinese history since 1945. The speaker, John Gittings, had witnessed the major events of the last 30 years, including the Tiananmen Square protests. He was China specialist & East Asia editor for the Guardian from 1983 to 2003.

One of his key points was the astonishing growth in the Chinese economy in recent years. Joseph Stiglitz, Clinton's economic advisor, has summed this up in one of his books on Globalisation:

"...China's transition has entailed the largest reduction in poverty in history in such a short time span (from 358 million in 1990 to 208 million in 1997, using China's admittedly lower poverty standard of $1 a day). Russia's transition has entailed one of the largest INCREASES in poverty in history in such a short time span (outside of war and famine)."

One of the obvious questions arising from China's dramatic annual economic growth rate is the effect on the environment.

At another talk a few days ago, the author of "Global Warming", Mark Maslin, suggested that China was building a new coal-fired generator every 4 days. Stiglitz, however, in a Guardian article earlier this year (April 13), points out that "within a month of the adoption of China's 11th five-year plan, new environmental taxes on cars, petrol and wood were imposed."

John Gittings has just written a book called "The Changing Face of China - from Mao to Market". It was described as "magisterial" by the Daily Telegraph. At the other end of the political spectrum Tribune's tribute was just as fulsome:

"No book on China...has so effectively set out, analysed, reflected upon and finally summarised the great Chinese conundrum as intelligently and objectively as Gittings. A piece of classic scholarship".