China Inc.: Book Review
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China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World Ted C. Fishman ISBN: 0743257529 |
Those who do not play with China will lose out first. Those who play will lose out later. No matter what, China wins. It is destined to become the dominant economic force in the world and we all going to help.
Ted Fishman spent 300 pages to say just that. He loads it up with anecdotes and statistics that boggle and later numb the mind.
Ted also gives a deep insight into how the central planning really works. I cannot help admiring what China has accomplished. In short 20 years, the government managed to transform the country. It turns its 1.3 billion population from a burden into a weapon. Western countries are all teaching and investing in China so that China can use the newly learned technologies and received funding to win the same games western countries are winning today.
Those who are interested in learning more about China have lots of reading choices. Ted Fishman could haved been more to the point and less lecturing, particularly at the end.
Quotable Quotes
In the 4 years beginning 1998, state-owned companies fired 21 million workers. That is more than all the Americans who work in manufacturing.
These people were hired with a lifetime-employment contract. They don't have severance pays, very minimal unemployment benefits, no trainings, or what-so-ever. They pretty much just got dumped on the street and left on their own.
It may be a country's physical infrastructure that ultimately makes or breaks its competitive strength. If the more immaterial assets in an economy can easily be replicated abroad – either by building them or movingt them – then the things that cannot be moved will be what set countries apart. Old-fashioned public goods such as roads, water, energy, and municipal services will be as important as the best engineers, telecommuications, and store of patents.
A similar concept was in the book of Genome. When nutrition, health care, and education become the same, the only thing that will make a difference is your genes.
As global traffic, internet bandwidth, talent education, etc. equalize countries, social infra-structure become the only competitive advantage.
Pekin, Illinois
Do you know this city was named after Beijing? It was said Beijing is on the opposite side of the globe and they rename the city as such.
It is natural for countries to use their market power to gain whatever commercial advantage they can. Faulting the Chinese for extracting concessions from companies that want to play in its yard would be faultijg it for demanding what its corporate suitors have willingly agreed to. And if the Chinese usurp technology that is not rightfully theirs, it is hard to argue that the corporate victims could have expected otherwise.
The companies may have expected it, but they don't have to like it and still should demand change. But let's not fool ourselves, everyone knew what to expect.
In a country that still bitterly remembers the humiliation of colonization, turning the tables by pilfering the property of foreigners will not cause much remorse.
I disagree strongly. This concept is dangerous. Dwelling in the past and using historical victimization as the justification for wrong-doing will only cause eternal bickering.
Americans now pay out greater dividents to foreigners than they take in, now live in the world as renters rather than as landlords. Renter nations live precariously.
This is a familar line on US national debts. Somehow, US borrows its way to prosperity. Will this last? Who knows.
In China, there are as nearly as many people learning English as a second language as there are people who speak English as a first language in the United States, Canada, and Great Britian combined.
Not only China has the largest number of Chinese-speaking people. It also appears to have the 2nd largest number of English-speaking people. Wow. (India should have the honor of having the most.)
