Well it turns out, we have many different alternatives for such a set of building blocks.

Now I want to offer you three building blocks for trying to understand what China is like, just as a beginning.

But first I have to ask what are these building blocks, like the alphabet, elements that I showed you?

So these 99 stones, a few kind of rules in the game Number one, you don't choose the stone the stone chooses you.

D. H. Lawrence, in his memoir of a voyage to Sardinia, Sea and Sardinia , that he undertook in January 1921, described the effect of warm Mediterranean sunlight on the white limestone city and compared Cagliari to a white Jerusalem .

Speaking at a TED Salon in London, economist Martin Jacques asks How do we in the West make sense of China and its phenomenal rise? The author of When China Rules the World, he examines why the West often puzzles over the growing power of the Chinese economy, and offers three building blocks for understanding what China is and will become.