Dr Karl Gerth (www.karlgerth.com) teaches modern Chinese history at Oxford University and is the Dame Jessica Rawson fellow and tutor at Merton College. His latest book is As China Goes, So Goes the World: How Chinese Consumers are Transforming Everything, which explores the wide-ranging ramifications of China’s shift toward a market economy over the past thirty years. He has conducted research in China and Japan on the impacts of consumerism for over twenty-five years.