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Product Description
What will happen when China can manufacture nearly everything that the United States and Europe can, at one-third the cost? It's a ground-shaking question and, when it comes to the West's future economic health, not everyone will want to hear the answer. The burgeoning output of China's vast low-cost factories and the swelling appetite of its 1.3 billion consumers, both of which are driven by infusions of foreign capital and technological know-how, are rapidly altering global commerce. So are China's newfound freedoms, national ambitions, and growing prestige. In CHINA INC., veteran journalist and former commodities trader, Ted Fishman, shows that economics is just where the story begins. Fishman paints a vivid picture of how the mega trends radiating out of China are shaping the day-to-day lives of people everywhere. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Chinese, European and American workers, managers, and executives, Fishman also tells 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 reportage and analysis.
Amazon.com Review
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
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