China, Inc: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World

Front Cover
Simon and Schuster, 2005 - 342 pages
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 nearlyeverything-- 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, andChina, 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.

From inside the book

Contents

The World Shrinks as China Grows
1
Taking a Slow Boat in a Fast China
19
The Revolution Against the Communist
37
To Make 16 Billion Socks First Break the Law
53
Meet George Jetson in Beijing
77
Chairman Mao Sells Soup
123
Through the Looking Glass
137
The China Price
177
Pirate Nation
231
The ChineseAmerican Economy
253
The Chinese Century
271
One Last Story
297
NOTES
305
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
321
INDEX
329
Copyright

How the Race to the Bottom Is a Race to the Top
203

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