[TheForge] new book review

[magichammer]

Bob, does it say anything about Chinese blacksmiths?
This is a blacksmith list.......
dave m

Schade wrote:

> Hope you like Chinese.
>
> Bob
> __________
>
>  CHINA INC.
>  How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World
>  By Ted C. Fishman
>  342 pages. Scribner. $26.
>
>  If the 20th was the American century, then the 21st belongs to China. 
> It's that simple, Ted C. Fishman says, and anyone who doubts it should 
> take his whirlwind tour of the world's fastest-developing economy.
>
>  The numbers are staggering. From 1982 through 2002, the United States 
> economy grew at an annual rate of 3.3 percent, he writes, well above 
> average for the world's most prosperous nations. China's economy grew 
> at an annual rate of 9.5 percent, meaning it "doubled nearly three 
> times over," in the generation since market reforms were introduced. 
> In 2003 it bought 7 percent of the world's oil, a quarter of its 
> aluminum and steel, almost a third of its iron ore and coal, and 40 
> percent of its cement. It makes 40 percent of all furniture sold in 
> the United States. Its 3,000 Christmas-decoration factories exported 
> more than $900 million tree trimmings and plastic Santas in the first 
> 10 months of 2003.
>
> "China still only makes one-twentieth of everything produced in the 
> world, but on the world stage it plays the role of a new factory in an 
> old industrial town," Mr. Fishman says. "It can spend, it can bully, 
> it can hire and dictate wages, it can throw old-line competitors out 
> of work. It changes the way everyone does business."
>
>  One of the most powerful weapons in China's economic arsenal is what 
> businesses have come to know as "the China price." A stampede from the 
> countryside to China's new industrial boomtowns has created a vast 
> low-wage army, working for an average of 40 cents an hour, that can 
> turn out consumer goods of every description even cheaper than Mexican 
> or Malaysian factories can. American factories that cannot deliver to 
> Wal-Mart or General Motors at the China price often face two stark 
> choices: they can go under or set up shop in China.
>
> Many choose option No. 2. But danger lies in that direction too. The 
> Chinese are adept at copying and quite loose in their interpretation 
> of intellectual property rights. One of Mr. Fishman's more striking 
> examples is the auto industry, which looms large in China's economic 
> plans. American and Japanese companies spend $1 billion to $2 billion 
> to develop a new car. The Chinese, by forcing foreign car companies to 
> form joint ventures with their companies and to share their technology 
> in order to enter China, hope to leapfrog over those kinds of 
> development costs.
>
>  Foreign companies, salivating at the thought of 100 million Chinese 
> customers, cannot stop themselves from signing on the dotted line. 
> Sometimes, rude surprises await. At the 2003 Shanghai auto show, G.M. 
> executives unveiled a new $9,000 small family van, only to discover an 
> identical vehicle, priced at $6,000, at a Chinese booth in the same 
> row. The clone was made by Chery, a Chinese company owned in part by 
> Shanghai Auto, G.M.'s joint-venture partner.
>
>  Americans who fret over Japanese-style assaults on major industries 
> miss the point, Mr. Fishman maintains. The real competition, he 
> argues, and the real source of China's strength, lie in local 
> enterprises "that spring on the scene lean and mean, planned and 
> financed by investors who want to make money quickly." No one in 
> Beijing analyzed the German toy industry and decided that China needed 
> to move in.
>
>  Mr. Fishman describes China's miracle economy with a mixture of fear 
> and admiration. He is a lively writer, and some of his most vivid 
> pages are devoted to the wrenching transformations brought about by 
> the government's controlled experiment in free enterprise. He paints a 
> neon-lit portrait of Shanghai, the showcase city of the new China. He 
> also walks through the market stalls and factory floors of new 
> super-cities like Shenzhen, a fishing town of 70,000 20 years ago that 
> now has 7 million people, making it larger than Los Angeles or Paris, 
> swelled by migrants from the countryside looking for a better life in 
> the city. They are part of the largest human migration in history, a 
> tide estimated to be as high as 300 million Chinese who account for 
> the dynamism of the Chinese economy.
>
> Their wishes, increasingly, will be our commands, Mr. Fishman says. 
> Their production and consumption patterns are already changing the way 
> Americans shop, the kinds of jobs, wages and pensions they can expect 
> and even the air they breathe. The Asian Brown Cloud, a wind-borne 
> industrial smog that originates on China's east coast, can be seen in 
> California as it rides the jet stream. (China has 7 of the world's 10 
> most polluted cities.)
>
>  Mr. Fishman does not really have any convincing ideas on how to meet 
> the Chinese challenge. The book goes a bit soft at the end, as he 
> recommends better education to deal with the narrowing research and 
> development gap between China and the United States. He would like to 
> see Washington pay as much attention to China as to the Middle East. 
> But he's a much better worrier than he is a problem solver. If it's 
> any consolation, China is beating just about everybody in the world 
> right now. How can you stop a nation where peasants figure out a way 
> to sell on eBay? It's simple, Mr. Fishman seems to be saying. You can't.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Manage membership or unsubscribe at:
> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/theforge
> theforge mail list group photo site is
> http://www.photoaccess.com
> Login:  blacksmithblacksmith at hotmail.com
> password:  anvil
> ___________
>
>
>


-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 266.1.0 - Release Date: 2/18/2005