The Great Global Transformation

The United States, China, and the Remaking of the World Economic Order

By: Branko Milanovic

Narrated by: Mark Arnold

This is an audiobook version of this book.

From the essential chronicler of the world economy, a portrait of the Great Powers in transition.

The world’s two great economic powers are on opposite trajectories. In the United States, decades of neoliberal policies produced a small class of rich elites and gutted the middle class. In China, the same global forces have created a massive new upper class. The result is the greatest reshuffling of global incomes since the Industrial Revolution—a dramatic shakeup of each country’s political order. As the two powers retreat from one another, the implications for their futures, and for the world economy, are uncertain.

In The Great Global Transformation, acclaimed economist Branko Milanovic draws on original research to chart how these seismic shifts will shape the next century of the global economy. As both the US and China retreat into protectionism, Milanovic shows how a new and multipolar world order will follow—and how rising nationalism will have dramatically different effects on the two countries. And he shows us the fight ahead: as plutocracy returns, global war threatens, and a new system silently shapes our nations, driving populist discontent to the breaking point.

A worthy successor to Capitalism, Alone and his other landmark works, Milanovic’s new book announces the arrival of a new era he terms “national market liberalism,” in which liberalism survives in domestic economies, but not necessarily in the social arena. The Great Global Transformation is Milanovic’s indispensable account of the new twenty-first century now underway.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2026 University of Chicago Press (P)2026 University of Chicago Press

Critic reviews

"Everyone today—from thinkers, to policy-makers, to citizens and workers—knows that something is happening to the global order, but no one has been able to understand what it is. Now, Branko Milanovic’s profound book explains this great global transformation. Simultaneously panoramic and telescopic, Milanovic’s explanation ranges across history, philosophy, economics, and politics to illuminate the fortunes of entire nations and of the individual people in them. There is no better account of how we have got to where we are, and no clearer-eyed analysis of where we might go next."—Daniel Markovits, author of The Meritocracy Trap

"In this incisive new book, Branko Milanovic draws on his unique combination of empirical rigor, philosophical depth, and sharp commentary to illuminate the forces behind the great transformations of our time. Anyone who wants to understand the issues that will decide our future should read it.”—Fritz Bartel, author of The Triumph of Broken Promises: The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism

"No one describes better and quantifies with such precision the global transformations now underway than Branko Milanovic. This is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of the world order."—Gordon Brown, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom