I am not going to the library for that book, but if I were a US student I would at least briefly entertain the idea of taking Bill Gates up on his offer of a free copy just for the fun of getting a present from him.

This seems very Pollyanna was the thought wandering across my mind as I read the article in Wikipedia and looked at their faces in the photo of the professor with his children and then I see Pollyannaism is the word one of the reviewers used.

There's a few issues I have just from reading an extract but let's stick to wealth - categorising the wealth of people by their country?!  Isn't that just a wonderful way of sweeping the poverty stricken under the carpet - average them out with the millionaires and billionaires.

I think you're right there must be some sort of a middle class developing in China, not going to categorise working in their factories as safe or healthy though.  

And let's juxtapose it to the story I heard about a remote village.  These are people who have lived in the same place up in the hills back into the mists of time.  Along comes someone waving his modern licence and before you know it their forest is gone.  There is a factory being fed by the logs, they have to work in it and are being told what to grow in their fields.

I don't know for sure that story is true.  I believed it at the time, I do think it probably is true. 

Asia is still a lot more feudalist than capitalist, isn't it.  And that's the sort of act that makes someone super wealthy.