China Fast Forward: the Technologies, Green Industries and Innovations Driving the Mainland's Future

"China today is a train traveling through a lightning storm. None of us are spectators; all of us are passengers." Bill Dodson opens up his book with this chilling weibo post, written in the immediate aftermath of the July 2011 high-speed train collision that killed 40 people and injured hundreds of others.

Dodson contends that the deadly collision involving the sleek emblem of Chinese modernity will prove to be a turning point in the relationship between the Chinese state and its people, a harbinger of a new and perhaps better era. The old social contract has frayed, he writes, and the accident, much like the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, will force fundamental change: "In 2011 China's central planners understood they had reached a tipping point in the nation's economic and social development."