Who are the leaders of China’s economic miracle? Where do they come from, and what are their wildest ambitions?

A hundred years ago it was the likes of Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie who were building the future.

With China closing in on America to become the world’s biggest economy, the next century belongs to names like… Zong… Dai… Liu.

We had better get used to it.

As I read ever-more hyperbolic accounts of the Chinese economy, its impact on global trade, and the spending spree of its newly rich middle classes, I wanted to find out about the men and women who are leading this transformation.

I was not after the bosses in government and the Communist Party, although they are pulling the levers in their state-controlled society.

I was seeking the people behind the country’s explosive economic growth – the top entrepreneurs.

They are the ones building world-beating companies, leading China’s export success and creating new jobs by the million.

Thirty years ago the Party denounced entrepreneurs as: ‘self-employed traders and peddlars who cheat, embezzle, bribe and evade taxation.’

Then the line changed. Deng Xiaoping, the driving force behind the move to capitalism after Mao’s death, famously declared ”to get rich is glorious”.

Benign Capitalism?

Karl Marx himself had a soft […]

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A U.S. Senate committee has launched an investigation into reports that doctors with financial ties to the medical device company Medtronic were aware of potentially serious complications with a spine surgery product made by the company yet failed to reveal those problems in published journal articles.

Citing news articles based on a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today investigation, two powerful members of the Senate Finance Committee contacted Medtronic Tuesday demanding an extensive list of documents, including financial records and communications between the company and doctors who have received millions in royalties and other payments from Medtronic over the last decade.

Medtronic was warned not to destroy or make inaccessible any of the documents, data, or other related information in the letter signed by committee chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and senior member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

The Gathering Storm

The growing controversy involves Medtronic’s spine surgery product Infuse, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2002.

Over the last year, an ongoing series of Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today investigations has raised questions about annual payments made to a core of prominent surgeons around the country who were involved either in the clinical testing of Infuse or co-authoring positive medical journal articles that failed to link the […]

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Over the last few decades, executive pay at large corporations has skyrocketed. Today, American CEOs make 263 times the average compensation for American workers, up from the 30 to 1 ratio in the 1970s. In 2010 alone, CEO pay went up 27 percent while average worker pay went up just 2 percent.

At the same time, corporate tax revenue has plunged to historic lows. During the 1960s, for instance, the United States consistently raised nearly 4 percent of GDP in corporate revenue. During the 1970s, the total was still above 2.5 percent of GDP. But the U.S. now raises less than 1.5 percent of GDP from the corporate income tax.

According to a new report called ‘S.& P. 500 Executive Pay: Bigger Than

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Obese teenage girls are more than twice as likely as other girls to develop high-level nicotine addiction as young adults, according to a new study. Nearly 20 percent of American adolescents currently are obese, the authors note.

Smoking is just one of the problematic behaviors that appeal to some teens, along with delinquency, drug use, alcohol use and early or unprotected sexual activity. Some of the risk factors that could lead teens to engage in these behaviors include low self-esteem, depression and poor academic performance. Obese teenage girls in the study were more likely to report each of these risk factors.

‘As we address the issue of obesity, it is important to prevent poor medical outcomes, but we must also recognize the risk for these psychosocial outcomes and support and counsel teens appropriately,

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The nation’s largest physician’s group has affirmed its support for a key part of President Obama’s health care overhaul.

At its annual meeting in Chicago, the American Medical Association (AMA) voted to maintain its official position in favor of the ‘individual mandate,’ which requires nearly all Americans to purchase health insurance. The AMA prefers the term ‘individual responsibility.’

‘The AMA has strong policy in support of covering the uninsured, and we have renewed our commitment to achieving this through individual responsibility for health insurance with assistance for those who need it,’ Dr. Cecil Wilson, president of the AMA, said in a statement. ‘The AMA’s policy supporting individual responsibility has bipartisan roots, helps Americans get the care they need when they need it and ends cost shifting from those who are uninsured to those who are insured.’

The decision was made by some 500 members of the House of Delegates, which sets policy for the AMA. The vote followed intense discussions, according to delegates who took part.

‘It was very emotional and it was very heated,’ said Dr. Bruce Malone, president of the Texas Medical Association, which opposes the mandate. ‘These are a large number of very intelligent people who can certainly have a democratic […]

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