When it comes to China, Westerners tend to focus on four major

When it comes to China, Westerners tend to focus on four major trends:

– The slowdown of their economic growth.
– Their crackdown on corruption.
– The growth of their middle class.
– The emergence of a Chinese private sector led by tech companies.

But if you delve deeper into those trends you see that some of the things we take for granted are changing. “We’ve gotten used to China as a low cost assembler to the world,” says Geoffrey Garrett, Dean of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and an avid China scholar. “That reality is changing.”

As the Chinese middle class grows, the country is moving away from the assembly line-cheap labor mentality and towards a consumption-driven economy. It’s a reality that both challenges American companies and provides them with opportunity.

In the past, “[Americans] were concerned that China was stealing our jobs because of lower wages and the like,” Garrett explains. “But of course we benefited enormously from the fact of the Chinese assembly line. Going forward, today, we’re benefiting enormously from the Chinese market.”