"China poses the most serious challenge to the United States since the half-century Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union," warns Halper (politics and international studies, U. of Cambridge, UK), who argues that the market authoritarian model of China's governing system could spread across the developing world as China increases its political and economic connections in Africa and Latin America, leaving the US in a world unsympathetic to democratic values and less open to American economic interests. Exploring the internal and external dynamics of China's economic growth and increasing role in world affairs, he suggests that without a change in the US approach to China, a "Beijing Consensus" of market authoritarianism and its promise of economic prosperity threatens to replace the "Washington Consensus" of neoliberalism, which Halper sees as a force for both economic growth and democratic values. Annotation ⓒ2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)