Kuala Lampur, Oct. 11 -- The conventional wisdom that China's economic slowdown necessarily signals its strategic decline deserves serious reconsideration.

Indeed, the assumption that India, Vietnam or other emerging economies can readily replace China as the world's manufacturing powerhouse may be one of the most consequential misjudgements in contemporary geopolitics.

This is the central argument of The Next China Is Still China: An Insider's Playbook for Winning in the New Era, co-authored by Joe Ngai and Nick Leung, two senior figures associated with McKinsey's extensive engagement with China's economic transformation.

Their book offers an important corrective to the increasingly fashionable narrative that China has reached the lim...