''China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power'' is a book on

travel literature The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern pe ...

by Rob Gifford, first published on January 1, 2007 by

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

. The book documents Gifford's 2004 trip across

China National Highway 312 China National Highway 312 (312国道), also referred to as Route 312 or The Mother Road, is a key east-west route beginning in Shanghai and ending at Khorgas, Xinjiang in the Ili River valley, on the border with Kazakhstan. In total it spans ...

from

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four Direct-administered municipalities of China, direct-administered municipalities of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the ...

to the China-Kazakhstan border and his observations of China. Gifford was at the end of his term as a China correspondent for

National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...

(NPR), and his experiences were the basis of several NPR stories.'China Road' Trip Gauges a Nation on the Move

Archive
.

. Retrieved on July 13, 2014. Vanessa Bush of ''

Booklist ''Booklist'' is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. ''Booklist''s primary audience consists of libraries, educators, and booksellers. The magazine is av ...

'' stated "Gifford notes an aggressive sense of competition in the man-eat-man atmosphere of a nation that is likely to be the next global superpower."Bush, Vanessa.
China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power.
(review). ''

''. Retrieved on July 13, 2014. Dinah Gardner of ''

Asia Times ''Asia Times'' (), formerly known as ''Asia Times Online'', is a Hong Kong-based English language news media publishing group, covering politics, economics, business, and culture from an Asian perspective. ''Asia Times'' publishes in English and ...

'' stated that "To anyone who has lived some time in China, Gifford's book is nothing revolutionary - the editors appear to have pruned it for a reader with little knowledge of the country."Gardner, Dinah.
An over-traveled road

. ''

''. December 1, 2007. Retrieved on July 13, 2014.

Reception

Gardner criticized "the intrusion of Gifford's religious views" and Gifford letting "moral outrage color his arguments" but concluded overall that the book "is, in every other way, a very vivid and lively piece of reportage."

References

2007 non-fiction books Books about China {{China-book-stub