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China has the world's most rapidly changing large economy, and according to Ted Fishman, it is forcing the world to change along with it. "No country has ever before made a better run at climbing every step of economic development all at once," he writes, in China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World. China is currently the largest maker of toys, clothing, and consumer electronics, and is swiftly moving up the ladder in car production, computer manufacturing, biotechnology, aerospace, telecommunications, and other sectors thanks to low-cost, high-tech factories. China is also where the world is investing. In 2004, for instance, the city of Shanghai alone attracted over $12 billion in direct foreign investment, roughly the same amount as all of Indonesia and Mexico received. In tracing China's ascendancy over the past 30 years (with annual growth of an astonishing 9.5 percent), Fishman presents a flood of facts, figures, forecasts, and anecdotes and examines the implications of this unprecedented growth for China, the U.S., and the rest of the world.
Calling China's huge population "arguably the greatest natural resource on the planet," Fishman details how hundreds of millions of peasants have migrated from rural to urban areas to find manufacturing jobs, providing an unlimited, low-wage workforce to power China's economy. In the process, this shift has changed both Chinese culture and the global business climate in significant ways. Simply put, American companies can't compete with wages as low as 25 cents an hour and lack of regulation and oversight, so are forced to move their operations to China or completely change the focus of their business. And it's not just a problem for the U.S.--even Mexico is outsourcing to China. Though it remains to be seen whether this will truly be the "Chinese Century" as Fishman asserts, China, Inc. is a brisk and informative look at why so many American corporations, and American jobs, are heading to China. --Shawn Carkonen
Book Description
China today is visible everywhere -- in the news, in the economic pressures battering the globe, in our workplaces, and in every trip to the store. Provocative, timely, and essential -- and updated with new statistics and information -- this dramatic account of China's growing dominance as an industrial superpower by journalist Ted C. Fishman explains how the profound shift in the world economic order has occurred -- and why it already affects us all.
How has an enormous country once hobbled by poverty and Communist ideology come to be the supercharged center of global capitalism? What does it mean that China now grows three times faster than the United States? Why do nearly all of the world's biggest companies have large operations in China? What does the corporate march into China mean for workers left behind in America, Europe, and the rest of the world?
Meanwhile, what makes China's emerging corporations so dangerously competitive? What will happen when China manufactures nearly everything -- computers, cars, jumbo jets, and pharmaceuticals -- that the United States and Europe can, at perhaps half the cost? How do these developments reach around the world and straight into all of our lives?
These are ground-shaking questions, and China, Inc. provides answers.
Veteran journalist Ted C. Fishman shows how China will force all of us to make big changes in how we think about ourselves as consumers, workers, citizens, and even as parents. The result is a richly engaging work of penetrating, up-to-the-minute reportage and brilliant analysis that will forever change how readers think about America's future.
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"China today is visible everywhere -- in the news, in the economic pressures battering america, in the workplace, and in every trip to the store. provocative, timely, and essential, this dramatic account of china's growing dominance as an industrial super-power by journalist Ted C. Fishman explains how the profound shift in the global economic order has occurred -- and why it already affects us all. How has an enormous country once hobbled by poverty and Communist ideology come to be the supercharged center of global capitalism? What does it mean that China now grows three times faster than the United States? That China uses 40 percent of the world's concrete and 25 percent of its steel? What is the global impact of 300 million rural Chinese walking off their farms and heading to the cities in the greatest migration in human history? Why do nearly all of the world's biggest companies now have large-scale operations in China? What does the corporate march into China mean for workers left behind in America, Europe, and the rest of the world? Meanwhile, what makes China's emerging corporations so dangerously competitive? What could happen when China will be able to manufacture nearly everything -- computers, cars, jumbo jets, and pharmaceuticals -- that the United States and Europe can, at perhaps half the cost? How do these developments reach around the world and straight into the lives of all Americans? These are ground-shaking questions, and China, Inc. provides answers.Veteran journalist and former commodities trader Ted C. Fishman paints a vivid picture of the megatrends radiating out of China. Fishman's account begins with the burgeoning output of China's vast low-cost factories and the swelling appetite of its 1.3 billion consumers, both of which are being driven by historically unprecedented infusions of foreign capital and technological know-how. Traveling through China's frenetic landscape of growth, Fishman visits the factories, markets, streets, stores, towns, and cities where the story of Chinese capitalism is being lived by one-fifth of all humanity. Fishman also draws on interviews with Chinese, American, and European workers, managers, and executives to show how China will force all of us to make big changes in how we think about ourselves as consumers, workers, citizens, and even as parents. The result is a richly engaging work of penetrating, up-to-the-minute reportage and brilliant analysis that will forever change how readers think about America's future. "
Customer Reviews:
Lacks critical analysis, nothing more than a collection of (incomplete) stories .......2007-09-04
Half of the book is like a PR campaign for Shanghai, saying how fascinating the city is without really critically examining its glories. It seems like the author has not ventured far away from Shanghai (even Zhejiang Province is bordering Shanghai) and to really delve into the rest of China. It is just like reading a book on U.S. economy while all it talks about is New York. Projecting New York for the rest of the U.S. is laughable, so is thinking Shanghai epitomizes the entire China.
Shanghai's success, at least in the past, critically relied on the extremely favorable national policies steered by Jiang Ze-ming, the former mayor of Shanghai who became the president after 1989 Tiananmen. Such biased national policies are highly questionable, and its impact on Shanghai long-term economic sustainability is also open for debate.
It's also weird for a book on China's economic transition to exclude meaningful discussion of the economic reforms in the Pearl River Delta area where all of the initial economic reforms started, and which is still one of the most important economic regions in China. Also, China's attempts to balance economic development between the coastal region and the inland region are largely ignored in the book (except some very light discussions here and there).
The second half of the book is not very organized and it is not clear what message the author was trying to get across. Overall, the book is nothing more than a collection of stories you can easily find in Economist. A better book for a quick intro and analysis of China's rise is The World is Flat, side by side is an analysis of India as a bonus...
Could have been at least 100 pages shorter.......2007-07-15
A lot of insights from the book but at the same time a lot of non-insights.
The book covers the movement of Chinese people from the farms to the cities and the attitude towards rapid modernization including piracy. However, you cannot FEEL it from first person point of view. You feel very detached reading the book.
It could have been more straight to the point and a lot of pages bored me.
The Tom Wolfe of China.......2007-05-24
This a kaleidoscopic view of the most dynamic country today on the planet. Sit down, strap up, and read the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test of the 21st Century. For a harder analytical edge, read my own volume The Coming China Wars: Where They Will Be Fought and How They Can Be Won
Please blame everything on China, is this a new trend to cover up American "disastrous" foreign policy? .......2007-05-11
So with all due respect:
1) If China is so bad, don't do business there, no one is forcing you
2) All American CEO who deals with China are unpatriotic Americans
3) All American CEO who outsource to China and India are immoral capitalist
4) All American CEO who deal with China should pay a fine or go to Jail. -But they are not! And as matter of facts, they are getting big bonuses.
5) Don't blame the Chinese, they are providing a service (cheap) but American consumers and executives are the ones knocking on their doors.
6) You can't have both ways; you can't try to use cheap labor in 3rd world countries and then turn around and point fingers at the people you are doing business with.
7) Stop bringing up the WWII theory on some of these comments, just because the USA fought and won WWI -which is GREAT! It does not mean the USA is correct FOREVER...common sense.
Excellent reference background............2007-04-11
My team at work does a lot of business with China and after one of the engineers read the book, we ordered about 15 copies for the entire department to read, we felt it was so worthwhile!
Book Description
Within 20 years -- possibly far sooner -- China will have the world's largest economy. That will powerfully impact you: your job, your company, your economic future, and your country. In The Chinese Century, Oded Shenkar shows how China is restoring its imperial glory by infusing modern technology and market economics into a non-democratic system controlled by the Communist party and bureaucracy.
Shenkar shows why China's accelerating growth differs radically from predecessors such as Japan, India, and Mexico -- and how it will lead to a radical restructuring of the global business system. Discover why the U.S. is most vulnerable to China's ascent... how China's disregard for intellectual property creates sustainable competitive advantage... and how China's growth impacts every global business and consumer.
Above all, Shenkar shows what you must do to survive and prosper in "the Chinese Century."
· Cheap labor + millions of high-skilled professionals
· How China will sustain dominance in low-tech industries as it enters high-tech realms
· Building tomorrow's Toyotas and Sonys... faster and cheaper
· Chinese multinationals: learning from joint ventures, preparing to lead
· Leveraging Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and the "Chinese diaspora"
· Bringing together the world's most powerful pool of human resources
· $2 Rolexes, and beyond
· Piracy, counterfeiting, bootlegging, and stolen intellectual property
· From economics to geopolitics: counterbalancing America
· Previewing China's increasingly assertive foreign policy
Customer Reviews:
Disappointing overall.......2007-07-05
It is rarely that I have written less than a glowing review of any book dealing with the topics of globalization, outsourcing and the ilk. As someone who is intrigued by these issues, I have found all of my reads thus far to be riveting and educative. I wish I could I say the same about Oded Shenkar's book "The Chinese Century." I am afraid that was not the case.
The book suffers from some clear flaws. First and foremost is the fact that it focuses solely on one facet of the Chinese growth story, viz. exports and imports, and that too from a largely US-centric world view. For someone who is interested in understanding the different facets of the Chinese story and its geopolitical ramifications (as can be seen today in China's relations with Sudan, Iran, and Venezuela among others), this book clearly falls short.
Second, the tone adopted by the author is one of unbridled optimism regarding China's growth prospects. I, for one, do not necessarily share the same world view. No nation has been able to eat its cake and have it too. If you want to be a modern nation enjoying all the economic benefits that come out of a free market system, you also need to be a democracy that is built on the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary, a free media and a vibrant middle class that is not afraid to speak up its mind. I am not sure China will be able to escape that painful transition at some point of time. The question is not "If", it is a question of "When". I would have therefore liked to see the author explain how China can make the transition from a communist nation ruled by a narrow clique to a modern nation without a democratic change thrown somewhere in between. I am afraid that he did not.
Finally to round off, I would also like to point out that the book suffers from typographical errors that are clearly unacceptable in a book published from Wharton School Publishing. Two examples, both from the same page (pg. 85 of the paper back edition) for the skeptics who need proof. "Finally, there is the potential liability and litigation cost when a safety-related product such as a break pad fails, and the legitimate manufacturer is implicated." Or, "The direct losses of U.S. IPR owners in copyrighted industries (such as movies) alone in China have been estimated at more than $1.8 annually." The proof reader probably needs to be told that it is not "break pads" but "brake pads" and that the losses to IPR owners are closer to $1.8 billion than $1.8!
Overall I am happy that the book finished at 187 pages. It's a disappointment though that not much of substance was said in those 187 pages.
Important Information!.......2006-12-31
"The Chinese Century" reminds us that our trade deficit with China is rapidly growing (up 20%/year from '01-'03), and also tells us that its composition is changing - the four highest categories in '03 were all technologically related (misc. manufactured articles, office machines and ADP equipment, telecommunications and sound-recording equipment, and electrical machinery). (Apparel/clothing and footwear were in 5th and 6th place, down from 2nd and 3rd in '99.)
Shenkar also imforms us that the Chinese are working to continue "moving up the food chain" via increasing the rate that overseas Chinese students return to China, increasing R&D spending within its organizations, and forcing overseas partners to provide valuable trade secrets. The percentage of American white-collar associated jobs lost in manufacturing has gone from 30% ('79-'89) to 35% ('90-'99), and is likely to increase further, shaking belief in the theorized overall benefit of job migration to more complex work, and the belief that education is good insurance against unemployment. (The unemployment rate for electrical engineers now is greater than the unemployment rate in general.)
China is often pilloried for violating intellectual property rights; Americans, however, should remember that the U.S. was also a major violator in the 19th century, and remained so until it emerged as a major producer of copyrighted/patented knowledge. Presumably China will follow a similar path. China is also attacked for not adjusting its exchange rate vs. the dollar - however, since its productivity-adjusted costs are about 12% that in the U.S., currency adjustment would not begin to solve the U.S.-China trade deficit. In addition, Americans need to remember that China needs to create 15 million new jobs/year to handle population growth, plus additional jobs to cover those lost due to closing ineffective government enterprises and rural residents wanting to move to its cities.
The book's avowed purpose is not on how to stop the tide of Chinese imports, but how to remain competitive. Unfortunately, its recommendations (more education) fall far short of what would be required, and are contradicted by its own material.
Yes, China is rising, BUT what must we do to survive and prosper in "the Chinese Century"?.......2006-11-05
It is obvious that China is rising and is impacting the rest of the world in an increasingly big way.
The value of The Chinese Century by Professor Oded Shenkar lies in its concise and vivid summary of China's rise and impact. As such, the author has achieved one of his goals he set out to achieve by writing this book.
However, the author clearly has not delivered what he promises to deliver in the Synopsis: "Above all, Shenkar shows what you must do to survive and prosper in "the Chinese Century"."
Indeed, as a business person, you might get even more dazzled after reading this book simply because this book gives you an academic snapshot of the China business scene (although with some vivid examples) rather than insights into and wisdom about what to do in order to succeed.
To know the latter, you have to read Dr Wei Wang's The China Executive: Marrying Western and Chinese Strengths to Generate Profitability from Your Investment in China.
Highly practical, The China Executive brings to light the highest essence of any business in the age of globalisation. It is also characterised by integration: integration of theory and practice, integration of analysis and intuition - integration, in other words, of all major concepts and ideas related to business. These include history, soceity, politics, economics and culture; management and leadership; operation, personnel, finance and marketing; organisation, market, industry and strategy; and human being, philosophy and humour.
In short, if you, as a business person, want to know what to do (as well as how to think) in "the Chinese Century", buy and read The China Executive.
Current and Comprehensive.......2006-10-15
Author Oded Shenkar provides up-to-date information, specific
details, and perspectives about the current and future ascension of
China. It is and will affect us locally and globally. This book
focuses on generalities and will be helpful to those who plan on
doing business in China or want to learn more about the "macro"
affects of the PRC's growing influence. Perhaps too obvious to state
(again) is China's coming economic, political, and military role in
our world. By now, this concept is cliche. Yet the question is
relevant, and now, moreso than ever before. The "Chinese Century"
largely focuses on the next 100 years. Surpassing the U.S.
economically, is predicted to happen within the next twenty years.
Many American companies have been complacent and industry leaders
were caught of guard by China's massive growth. Lackadaisical?
fixed, mind-sets? Competitors in neighboring countries (e.g. Korea)
started losing out to China in the 1990s.
Some of the common questions and discussions that Shenkar addresses
are: "How will China's economic ascension will affect its region and
the entire world?" "How will it impact and transform the U.S.
economy?" "How will it change you?" The author notes the transition
of the American economy to a service-sector economy.
Domestically, the more challenging aspects for the CPC and Chinese
society are how to lessen and/or resolve the Income Gap between
Eastern cities and rural areas (and within these cities themselves).
Those in the eastern China are living in a radically different world
than those inland. Both of these groups are aware of the differences
between them as status symbols, faster-paced life, and incessant
conspicuous consumption propel attitudes, the economy, and egos.
There is quantifiable alienation between the "have-nots," who
outnumber the "haves" by hundreds of millions. Confrontations over
water and land-use, and eminent domain, are frequently reported.
Stealing Intellectual Property:
The Chinese can produce - but they cannot create. "Creativity" and
"ingenuity" are the new buzzwords of the government. Creativity may
or may not happen. If it is ever achieved to some degree, it will
take time (generations) and will require changes to the cultural
mindset and education system.
Implementing Foreign Policy Interests:
The U.S. acts upon its own self-centered interests like many dominant
nation-states. America's economic might promotes its diplomatic and
trade interests in the international world. Often these strengths
reinforce and complement one another when pressuring countries to "go
along" with the current administration in Washington, regardless of
who is in power.
The Chinese may do this too, if they choose to "go international."
I believe Chinese foreign policy will become more direct and
unilateral.
Economic might brings diplomatic, political, and potential military
might (if China continues its high military spending). Westerners
should realize that there's no motivation nor reason for the Chinese
people to want the values and beliefs of liberal democracies of the
West. To think they would, is culturally-centric arrogance.
Corruption:
Corruption exists in many countries of the world. In China it's an
epidemic from the bottom ranks to the highest levels of society. It
has to be dealt with. Even reducing it may take more than one or two
generations. Morality is also an issue. Hu Jintao recently outlined
the "8 honors and 8 shames" in 2004. Meant for the Chinese people,
but specifically geared towards party members. It's a general and
idealistic message. Will it be followed? This reinforces the fact
that rampant corruption, greed, and selfishness is a primary obstacle
to economic and political stability. Throughout East Asia
competition outweighs cooperation in business and social
interactions.
What will China be like when it has the economic power to promote its
interests?
The Chinese understand and realize they are "producers." They are
not "creators." They're not "individuals." However - if - they ever
become creative, adaptable, and individualistic, beware.
Incidentally, anyone who thinks that a market-based economy promotes
or is conducive to forms of "democratic representation" is completely
misinformed. The pairing of these two is the exception, not the
rule.
The U.S. derides Cuba for it authoritarianism and refuses to do
business with Cuba, while at the same time it's in bed with China,
which is far more brutal, oppressive, and venal.
A good book. Recommended.
Insightful and well-written .......2006-05-31
China is a quickly rising economy on the world stage and many liken it to another Japan on the horizon. However, there are as many differences as there are similarities between the rise of the Chinese economy and the rise of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. These differences are critical if you are going to understand the impact this will have on the American and world economy. What is the legacy of China's history and how is that impacting their current economy? How is China dealing with (or not dealing with) the problem of piracy and bootlegging of legitimate products on the world market and how will that affect their position on the world market stage? The author deftly covers opportunities and challenges in the China market and in United States Chinese market. The Chinese Century is highly recommended for anyone who wishes to understand the Chinese market and the implications of that market for the United States.
Book Description
Based on official Chinese sources as well as intensive interviews with Hong Kong residents formerly employed in mainland factories, Andrew Walder's neo-traditional image of communist society in China will be of interest not only to those concerned with China and other communist countries, but also to students of industrial relations and comparative social science.
Book Description
As China has evolved into an industrial powerhouse over the past two decades, a new class of workers has developed: the dagongmei, or working girls. The dagongmei are women in their late teens and early twenties who move from rural areas to urban centers to work in factories. Because of state laws dictating that those born in the countryside cannot permanently leave their villages, and familial pressure for young women to marry by their late twenties, the dagongmei are transient labor. They undertake physically exhausting work in urban factories for an average of four or five years before returning home. The young women are not coerced to work in the factories; they know about the twelve-hour shifts and the hardships of industrial labor. Yet they are still eager to leave home. Made in China is a compelling look at the lives of these women, workers caught between the competing demands of global capitalism, the socialist state, and the patriarchal family.
Pun Ngai conducted ethnographic work at an electronics factory in southern China’s Guangdong province, in the Shenzhen special economic zone where foreign-owned factories are proliferating. For eight months she slept in the employee dormitories and worked on the shop floor alongside the women whose lives she chronicles. Pun illuminates the workers’ perspectives and experiences, describing the lure of consumer desire and especially the minutiae of factory life. She looks at acts of resistance and transgression in the workplace, positing that the chronic painsâsuch as backaches and headachesâthat many of the women experience are as indicative of resistance to oppressive working conditions as they are of defeat. Pun suggests that a silent social revolution is underway in China and that these young migrant workers are its agents.
Customer Reviews:
Treat workers as human beings for better results.......2006-10-30
Anyone working on CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), with NGOs, or otherwise on development issues in China and most developing countries should read this book. I only wish Pung Nai had a shorter version where she cut out all the intellectual references to supposed `great thinkers' of the past century and actually kept it to its GEMS, which are her own insights into the true life realities for women factory workers.
This book came from Pung Nais PhD as she tells us. This is unfortunate as it makes what is otherwise fantastic material hard to read and slow. But the well written sections tell us stories of individual workers odysseys to Shenzhen from far away provinces, and explain social issues in China, and factory language providing insights few other writers have provided.
To those working on improving factory conditions, there are a lot of great tips here about what Not to do. Pung Nai talks about worker slowdowns due to frustration at dogmatic authoritarian pressure to work faster, or have music turned off, etc, and of workers being less efficient and regularly fainting from working excessive overtime. Reading this book gives those of us working to encourage factory managers to give their workers more reasonable hours and wages, more force in our argument that doing so will improve productivity and quality.
Regardless, Pung Nai points out the terrible toll on peoples lives of excessive overtime, particularly the physical and psychological impacts on young women, who are not only burdened by the work pressure, but also familial pressures back home to marry and have sons. It helps us understand the value of programmes such as Nikes high school graduation programme for factory workers in Asia, to give workers a chance to gain self respect and pride in an environment in which the very essence of who they are, country girls, is looked down upon.
Marxist retoric in disguise.......2006-06-16
By in large, to explain this book, "Made in China" by Pun Ngai, I have to look first at several different issues: the politics behind it, the assumptions they draw upon, and the things she leaves out. First off let me go into the politics behind this book. The more and more I read this book, the more and more I hate it. I'm sorry for saying that--well, not really. Maybe Pun Ngai has good intentions by pointing out only the negatives in every instance, but I couldn't help but be reminded of some transient theme behind all of her pessimisms. If I didn't know any better, which I obviously don't, I would say that Pun Ngai was defaming China not for being against the US and world cohesion, but for being for it. By that, I mean, that this book is extremely Marxist, anti capitalist, and anti US--to stand behind this book, while still maintaining any sense of American patriotism or pride is contradictory. This response may seem to be merely a defensive stance in terms of capitalism versus Marxist communism, but I'd like to think that it's more than that. The type of thought from this book isn't rare in China, Pun Ngai is only a part of a widely criticizing faction growing within China that likes to point out all the negatives of globalization, free trade, or neo-liberalism by pointing out the exploits and the harsh conditions being subjugated upon the workers, while disregarding any and all positive benefits they receive personally as well as any benefits towards the government as a whole. In this way, it is kind of like focusing in on only one part of a government's policies, focusing in on only one company still undergoing reform in the face of a more global privatized free trade open market economy, focusing in on only the lower echeloned workers most of whom are uneducated towards global perspectives, and focusing in on only the negative aspects of their lives. It is in this way that Pun Ngai was able to write such a completely negatively slanted defamation to all logical and true global debate. When the benefits of a society's system out weigh the negatives, in order to make a Marxist argument for conflict, one has to actually dig down to the bottom of the barrel and scrape the conflicts out with a spoon. The term "spoon" I am using is a metaphor for the subtle way Pun Ngai is trying to prove her points. It was written to incite outrage and to depict a sense of rebellion or resistance, which may or may not have actually been there, just to further her own party or social group's political ideologies. However, though, in the face of actual research and more information, for lack of a better way of putting this, Pun Ngai is just digging up dirt. This book was not written to discuss whether globalization is ultimately more or less beneficial to society, it was written to persuade people in how globalization is only negative.
Book Description
Dragon in a Three-Piece Suit is an innovative sociological examination of what is perhaps the main engine of economic reform in China, the large industrial firm. Doug Guthrie, who spent more than a year in Shanghai studying firms, interviewing managers, and gathering data on firms' performance and practices, provides the first detailed account of how these firms have been radically transformed since the mid-1980s.
Guthrie shows that Chinese firms are increasingly imitating foreign firms in response both to growing contact with international investors and to being cut adrift from state support. Many firms, for example, are now less likely to use informal hiring practices, more likely to have formal grievance filing procedures, and more likely to respect international institutions, such as the Chinese International Arbitration Commission. Guthrie argues that these findings support the de-linking of Western trade policy from human rights, since it is clear that economic engagement leads to constructive reform. Yet Guthrie also warns that reform in China is not a process of inevitable Westernization or of managers behaving as rational, profit-maximizing agents. Old habits, China's powerful state administration, and the hierarchy of the former command economy will continue to have profound effects on how firms act and how they adjust to change.
With its combination of rigorous argument and uniquely rich detail, this book gives us the most complete picture yet of Chinese economic reform at the crucial level of the industrial firm.
Download Description
Dragon in a Three-Piece Suit is an innovative sociological examination of what is perhaps the main engine of economic reform in China, the large industrial firm. Doug Guthrie, who spent more than a year in Shanghai studying firms, interviewing managers, and gathering data on firms' performance and practices, provides the first detailed account of how these firms have been radically transformed since the mid-1980s. Guthrie shows that Chinese firms are increasingly imitating foreign firms in response both to growing contact with international investors and to being cut adrift from state support. Many firms, for example, are now less likely to use informal hiring practices, more likely to have formal grievance filing procedures, and more likely to respect international institutions, such as the Chinese International Arbitration Commission. Guthrie argues that these findings support the de-linking of Western trade policy from human rights, since it is clear that economic engagement leads to constructive reform. Yet Guthrie also warns that reform in China is not a process of inevitable Westernization or of managers behaving as rational, profit-maximizing agents. Old habits, China's powerful state administration, and the hierarchy of the former command economy will continue to have profound effects on how firms act and how they adjust to change. With its combination of rigorous argument and uniquely rich detail, this book gives us the most complete picture yet of Chinese economic reform at the crucial level of the industrial firm.
Customer Reviews:
reader friendly.......2000-12-01
Finally, an academic who puts it into words so the rest of us can understand! Dragon in a Three Piece Suit tackles difficult issues in a way that is easily understandable to those of us who don't study economic systems full-time but are interested in learning about them. Guthrie manages to write a compelling work that is simply eloquent - a book that appeals to both academics and the regular-Joe. I appreciated his insights and predictions regarding Chinese economic reform.
Book Description
This book tells the story of China's emergence as a major economic power and the huge impact this will have on world business. Over the last five years Peter Nolan has conducted a major investigation into Chinese industry, its economic structure, and the opportunities for growth in the future. As one of just four world experts invited by the Chinese Government to consult on their application to joint the World Trade Organisation he has worked closely with the heads of Chinese industry and with many foreign multinationals operating in China. China and the Global Economy is an executive summary of the opportunities for business in one of the largest markets in the world, by one passionate about its possibilities for the future.
Book Description
One of the core assumptions of recent American foreign policy is that China's post-1978 policy of "reform and openness" will lead to political liberalization. This book challenges that assumption and the general relationship between economic liberalization and democratization. Moreover, it analyzes the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) liberalization on Chinese labor politics.
Market reforms and increased integration with the global economy have brought about unprecedented economic growth and social change in China during the last quarter of a century. Contagious Capitalism contends that FDI liberalization played several roles in the process of China's reforms. First, it placed competitive pressure on the state sector to produce more efficiently, thus necessitating new labor practices. Second, it allowed difficult and politically sensitive labor reforms to be extended to other parts of the economy. Third, it caused a reformulation of one of the key ideological debates of reforming socialism: the relative importance of public industry. China's growing integration with the global economy through FDI led to a new focus of debate--away from the public vs. private industry dichotomy and toward a nationalist concern for the fate of Chinese industry.
In comparing China with other Eastern European and Asian economies, two important considerations come into play, the book argues: China's pattern of ownership diversification and China's mode of integration into the global economy. This book relates these two factors to the success of economic change without political liberalization and addresses the way FDI liberalization has affected relations between workers and the ruling Communist Party. Its conclusion: reform and openness in this context resulted in a strengthened Chinese state, a weakened civil society (especially labor), and a delay in political liberalization.
Book Description
In this incisive analysis of one of the most spectacular economic breakthroughs in the Deng era, Jean C. Oi shows how and why Chinese rural-based industry has become the fastest growing economic sector not just in China but in the world. Oi argues that decollectivization and fiscal decentralization provided party officials of the localities--counties, townships, and villages--with the incentives to act as entrepreneurs and to promote rural industrialization in many areas of the Chinese countryside. As a result, the corporatism practiced by local officials has become effective enough to challenge the centrality of the national state.
Dealing not only with the political setting of rural industrial development, Oi's original and strongly argued study also makes a broader contribution to conceptualizations of corporatism in political theory. Oi writes provocatively about property rights and principal-agent relationships and shows the complex financial incentives that underpin and strengthen the growth in local state corporatism and shape its evolution. This book will be essential for those interested in Chinese politics, comparative politics, and communist and post-communist systems.
Customer Reviews:
China's rural industrial miracle.......2000-04-26
In the 1990s, Dr. Oi wrote several journal articles detailing the crucial role of the local state in post-Mao China's economic development. This book is a long version based on her extensive field research.
China's explosive growth of rural industry raises considerable doubt about conventional wisdoms on property rights. Because these factories were collectively owned, they should have had all kinds of incentive problems. Yet, they were the engine of China's unusually rapid rural development from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s. Dr. Oi explains how they accomplished this.
In the late 1990s, the overinvested TVE sector stalled and contracted, with many firms subsequently privatized to managers, which Dr. Oi discusses briefly in this work and expands on in the volume she co-edited _Property Rights and Economic Reform_. The causes and methods of privatization of TVEs is complex and has resulted in much academic literature, of which Susan Whiting's _Power and Wealth in Rural China: The Political Economy of Institutional Change_ was an early example.
People in development agencies should take notice of Oi's book, because the history of local state corporatism and community ownership of firms in the first 20 years of the reform era has important lessons for both growth and distribution.
Book Description
In 1982, twenty thousand Chinese-American garment workers-mostly women--went on strike in New York's Chinatown and forced every Chinese garment industry employer in the city to sign a union contract. In this pioneering study, Xiaolan Bao penetrates to the heart of Chinese-American society to explain how this militancy and organized protest, seemingly so at odds with traditional Chinese female behavior, came about.
Bao conducted more than a hundred interviews, primarily with Chinese immigrant women who were working or had worked in the Chinatown garment shops and garment-related institutions in the city. Blending these poignant, often dramatic personal stories with a detailed history of the garment industry, Chinese immigrant labor, and the Chinese community in New York, Bao shows how the high rate of married women participating in wage-earning labor outside the home profoundly transformed family culture and with it the image and empowerment of Chinese-American women.
Bao offers a complex and subtle discussion of the interplay of ethnic and class factors within the garment industry in New York City. She examines the exploitative paternalism, rooted in ethnic social and economic structures, by which operators sustained low wages and marginal working conditions. She also documents the uneasy relationship between the ILGWU and rank-and-file women garment workers whose claim to direct representation was essentially ignored by union leadership.
Through the words of the women workers themselves, Bao shows how their changing positions within their families and within the workplace galvanized them to unite and stand up for themselves. Passionately told and prodigiously documented, Holding Up More Than Half the Sky is an important contribution to Asian-American history, labor history, and the history of women.
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The Making of the Chinese Industrial Workplace: State, Revolution, and Labor Management (Cambridge Modern China Series)
Mark W. Frazier
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0521028760 |
Book Description
The origins of the "iron rice bowl" of comprehensive cradle-to-grave benefits and lifetime employment in Chinese factories is traced in this book. It suggests that, in some ways, the Chinese revolution in 1949 was not as revolutionary as most have thought. This is one of a very few books to look comparatively at the Chinese industrial workplace in pre-1949 China and post-1949 China. Frazier has mined sources that were unavailable to previous generations of researchers on China.
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State workers in China have until recently enjoyed the 'iron rice bowl' of comprehensive cradle-to-grave benefits and lifetime employment. This central institution in Chinese politics emerged over the course of various crises that swept through China's industrial sector prior to and after revolution in 1949. Frazier explores critical phases in the expansion of the Chinese state during the middle third of the twentieth century to reveal how different labor institutions reflected state power. While the 'iron rice bowl' is usually seen as an outgrowth of Communist labor policy, Frazier's account shows that is has longer historical roots. As a product of the Chinese state, the iron rice bowl's dismantling in the 1990s has raised sensitive issues about the way in which the contemporary Chinese state exerts control over urban industrial society. This book sheds new light on state and society relations in China under the Nationalist and Communist regimes.
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