A Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, which puts together, among other products, the iPhone.
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Despite these challenges, don't count China out. It has routinely silenced naysayers and defied gloom-and-doom predictions. The economy, even amid a current slowdown, has remained enviably robust, expanding by 7.8% in the third quarter. And a major slate of reforms may be unveiled at a Communist Party plenum in November. Yet transforming a fractious developing country of such gargantuan size into an economically advanced nation has simply never been done before. "You've got 50 years of business innovation in the U.S. trying to happen here in 10 years," says GGV's Richards. That may be too much to ask of any country, even China.
--With reporting by Chengcheng Jiang/Beijing