Customer Reviews: Read 41 more reviews...
 worth buying May 28, 2008
Slower delivery, but great condition. Appreciate the quality. This book is informative of today's China business, trade, public policies, etc.
Fast notes on big issues. March 29, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The author, Peter Navarro, is a professor of business at UC Irvine. His book "the Coming China Wars" is written like a business textbook, clear, concise, and to the point. Each chapter focuses on a particular issue (e.g. counterfeit goods, water projects, illicit drug production etc.) and how, if unresolved, civil disorder, has or could result.
The breadth of issues addressed Navarro addresses is amazing, yet the author's provides sufficient detail that almost any reader will learn something new. At time, the phrases such as the "china price" and "factory floor to the world" are a little overworked, but this is a very minor flaw.
Some readers might find the title "the coming wars (plural) . . " misleading. Howvever, the author, very early in his book states he does not mean a shooting war (though this is still possible over Taiwan). The "wars" he writes about are political, not military.
Navarro makes some suggestions about how China (and other nations) can avoid these "wars" but after laying out his case "for war" so forcefully, these suggestions seem weak.
Still, a very good, if business style, read.
 China-Bashing at its worst February 10, 2008
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
"[China] requires our understanding and engagement - not our enmity and suspicion, which could culminate in self-defeatingly creating the very crisis we fear" (Hutton 2006)
A line from the book? Hardly! Nevertheless, The Coming China Wars relates in an unmistakable to this quote, for it exemplifies in starkest terms the very enmity and suspicion that Will Hutton cautions against in The Writing on the Wall: Why We Must Embrace China as a Partner or Face Her as an Enemy. If the choice of title for the book itself fails to communicate the line of thought that pervades the book, the reader need not go any further than the author's introduction, which he begins with a fictitious October 25, 2012, News Release, entitled "U.S.-China Chill Melts Down World Markets." It remains highly debatable whether or not, as the author claims, "China has put itself on a collision course with the rest of the world," or whether that purportedly inevitable course is not possibly the result of a larger combination of factors, including not least highly de-contextualized and emotional analysis for which the United States, in the eyes of the noted German journalist and author, Peter Scholl Latour, appears to have a near infallible inclination in recent years. The Coming China Wars merely helps to further cement this perception.
Navarro discusses eight major China Wars that, ironically enough considering his heavy-handed, one-sided analytical approach, he argues require "a better understanding of the complexities of the economic origins" so as to "lead to their peaceful resolution" (xix). These China Wars include what he describes as (1) the Not-So-Swashbuckling Piracy Wars, (2) The 21st Century Opium Wars, (3) The Air Pollution and Global Warming Wars, (4) The "Blood for Oil" Wars, (5) The New Imperialist Wars, (6) The Damnable Dam and Water Wars, (7) China's Wars from Within, and (8) China's Ticking Time Bombs.
It is not altogether clear why "any complete understanding of the coming China Wars" (p. 2) must begin with a discussion of the so-called `China Price', but that nevertheless is the starting point of the book. Navarro identified nine drivers that sustain what he calls the "weapon of mass production" - low-wage labor; lax health, safety, and environmental regulations; foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows; industrial network clustering; pervasive piracy and counterfeiting; undervalued currency; government subsidies; and protectionist tendencies. Without any truly contextual (e.g. attempting to understand the range of factors influencing the Chinese government's position on exchange rate system, or acknowledging the views of Nobel laureates in economics (Josephy Stiglitz and Robert Mundell) who cautioned against rapid re-valuation of the Chinese currency) or comparative (e.g. China's protectionist and purported neo-mercantilist tendencies pale in comparison to those of Japan in the 1980s and South Korea up to this day) frameworks, this first chapter holds little value except for the fact that Navarro relies on the implied causality of the China Price and export-led economic growth to pave the way for the arguments offered in the remainder of the book.
Perhaps the least controversial chapter in the book may be the one dealing with the issue of widespread piracy and counterfeiting, though the near two-page exposition of fictional scenarios seems intended more as page filler and sensational highlighting of the problems than objective, detached scholarly analysis (of which this book is largely devoid). The importance of this particular topic, however, is undeniable, as has been documented by recent headline-grabbing news surrounding pet food and toothpaste exports from China. The author aptly (although very briefly) discusses the problems related to enforcement of intellectual property rights in China in terms of the inherent economic logic that leads to a vast discrepancy between policy and lawmaking at the center and enforcement at the local level; highlights divergent forms of piracy and counterfeiting ("ghost -shift," reverse-engineering, and "start-up counterfeiter" scenarios); and argues that the legal system of pirate (in)justice will only be addressed in more coherent fashion following the emergence of Chinese businesses with their own intellectual property to safeguard.
Air pollution and general environmental problems are the subject of Chapter 3. The author puts emphasis on China's reliance on coal as a primary source of energy and the contributory effect thereof on rising levels of air pollution, the alarming and accelerating onset of desertification and dust storms - related to over-cultivation, overgrazing, and deforestation - and the resulting impact on China and the world. The problem of effectively combating environmental pollution in China appears also linked to a large extent to questions of economic logic. As Navarro notes, "local officials either collude with corrupt local businesses or believe that nothing must be allowed to slow economic growth" (p. 61). Curiously enough, the obvious challenge and importance of these issues notwithstanding, Navarro chooses to (conveniently?) ignore even a simple mention of the various steps the Chinese government has taken to begin to address these issues.
Chapters 4 and 5 address the issue of energy and raw materials sourcing. From the author's point of view, China's growing thirst for oil is based on an amoral foreign policy ("just business, no politics") characterized by a preference for bilateral contracting (p. 72) rather than coordination and cooperation at the international oil market level, holds the distinct possibility of an accelerated arms race (i.e. guns for oil), leads to a ready embrace of dictatorial regimes, and heightens territorial disputes in the South China Sea. How strange that in enumerating these concerns, it did not occur to the author to reflect on U.S. foreign policy. After all, the "Blood for Oil" part of the title for Chapter 3 seems rather more appropriate for the U.S. than the Chinese case. If, up to this point, the reader has failed to notice Navarro's distinct bias, it comes powerfully to the fore in his discussion of the so-called "new imperialist" wars and "parasitic African adventure" of Chapter 5. Critiquing China (rightly or wrongly) for "using its amoral foreign policy and diplomatic powers at the United Nations to protect African dictators and strongmen from all manners of international pressures and sanctions" (p. 96) certainly does not amount to claiming a moral high ground for other countries, including the United States, for even cursory overview of U.S. foreign economic and strategic policies will inevitably point out similar self-interested attitudes by the U.S. government.
The apex of hypocrisy and ludicrous argumentation, however, is undoubtedly reached in Chapter 6. The less than appropriate comparison with the Opium Wars of the 18th century to China's `role' in the narcotics game notwithstanding, the author implies, however irresponsibly, that the China of the 21st century aims to achieve what Britain managed to do through the Opium Wars - conquering markets for their product. The following quotes, more than any commentary, highlight Navarro's inherent analytical naivete and bias: "Although China has conquered many an export market...the same cannot be said for hard drugs. At least in this particular "China War," the Middle Kingdom has lots of bad company" (p. 110); "Today, one of the most important roles that China plays in the global heroin trade is to provide criminal syndicates with the vast quantities of the precursor chemicals needed to turn opium paste into heroin" (p. 112); "China also clandestinely exports precursor ephedrine to Russia the `domestic production of methamphetamine in kitchen labs in quantities for personal use" (p. 121). For a moment, the author also seems to have switched profession, indulging the reader with a methamphetamine and ecstasy primer, stretching over a combined six and a half pages.
The remaining chapters, meanwhile, offer a welcome return to a more balanced analysis, following the extreme bias and implicit/explicit distortions of Chapter 6. A rather short Chapter 7 speaks to the environmental and ecological problems related to China's obsession with dam-building, while Chapter 8 covers the political economy of water pollution and water scarcity. In "China's Wars from Within" (Chapter 9), the authors puts forward the proposition that the distinct potential for "wars from within" is intricately linked to issues such as water pollution and scarcity, corruption, income disparity, rural dislocation, and issues further developed in this chapter. The high level of unemployment, for example, appears correlated with privatization (i.e. the smashing of the "Iron Rice Bowl") and urbanization.. In this context, challenges to the institutional structures of the CCP are increasingly beginning to manifest itself in open discontent and rising numbers of protests; oftentimes fueled by perceived excesses in corruption among party members and seemingly indiscriminate favoritism based on guanxi (a term which the author has managed to misspell throughout the book!). Though far less biased than previous chapters, the fact that the author tries to cover a wide range of issues in just 19 pages (from unemployment, rising popular discontent of the dispossessed, and indications of possible class wars to manifestations of corruption, ethnic strife and Muslim separatism) attests to the hasty compilation of this work, considering that it is all largely devoid of substantive contextualization (a critique which I shall return to shortly).
In Chapter 10, Navarro puts the finger on the problems and challenges posed by a rapidly ageing population, a largely under-funded pension system in China, a crisis-ridden health-care system, the political effect of environmental protesters (the discussion of which would have been better suited for Chapter 9), and China's "ticking HIV/AIDS time bomb" (pp. 188-198).
In the closing chapter, Navarro pulls out the final stops with his policy prescriptions for "how to fight - and win! - the coming China Wars." In discussing his prescriptions for combating China's global pollution, he goes so far as to imply that businesses of advanced industrial economies may "set up shop in China simply to avoid more stringent restrictions in the home country" (p. 202). Of course, no inkling of evidence is provided to even begin to entertain this claim, which may not hold up to strict scrutiny to begin with! On the notion of "China's immoral and opportunistic use of its U.N. veto as a diplomatic shield for all manners of outrage," he goes so far as to advocated the intensely naive proposition that if "China's abuses of power continue," U.N. member states should "seek to strip China of its permanent veto" (p. 202).
Not to be outdone, in the last few pages, he then even deems it necessary to ever so briefly and simplistically comment on an ever-lingering bogeyman in the Washington establishment - the rise in Chinese military spending and the obvious potential for heightened conflict, if it is to grow at present levels.
As previously mentioned, I shall now briefly return to a critique of the overall style and research that went into this work. In the author's own words, "this book is a carefully researched attempt to break free from the chains of repression and non-fact-based rhetoric that has characterized so much of the current debate" (p. 211) and "[T]he primary research for this book involved analyses of tens of thousands of pages of material from books, newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, government agencies...international organizations..., "think tanks," and numerous websites and blogs" (p. 219). If the reader makes it through the book and resisting the temptation to throw it away after the first chapter, these comments are bound to trigger laughter. For such purportedly extensive research, the book offers nothing in terms of explanatory and objective analytical value. In fact, rather than steering away from non-fact-rhetoric, as Navarro claims, he did not hesitate to add further to it.
Of 217 pages, a grand total of 134 feature extensive, sometimes paragraph-long (in some instances even spanning an entire page) quotes of various sources. It becomes quickly obvious that the text following these quotes is merely a descriptive and biased attempt at further extending the message in the original citation. My personal favorite was that the author, in his arguably diligent research has put primary emphasis on websites and blogs, as the bibliography clearly attests. He did not even hesitate to draw on wikipedia as a source on two occasions - to define the notion of "realpolitik" (he did not even bother to look at the voluminous literature on realpolitik itself to provide an authoritative definition), and then in his discussion of China's dam building.
As the reader can gather from this review, I thoroughly disliked the book and found it highly one-sided, biased and devoid of anything even resembling substantive analysis. Books with tempting titles such as The Coming China Wars appear to attract a large audience, and thus contribute to a further misinformation of a readership that may lack the basic foundational knowledge to properly assess the message and arguments presented in such books. Yet, sadly, many authors simply feel the pulse and mood of the times and pander to the demands and viewpoints held by a majority with sensationalist, hastily compiled publications that do no one any real service. The Coming China Wars, if nothing else, deserves high praise for its obvious success in handily contributing to a intensification of already distorted viewpoints on China of people that do not have the grounding or drive to differentiate value-enhancing scholarship from useless, sensationalist, cut-and-paste style commentary.
Very interesting February 9, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book was well written. It gives you a small look into China's mysterious and often selfish goals. They're not so shy after all.
 Waste of time! November 24, 2007
9 out of 14 found this review helpful
I want my money back! The author's knowledge and understanding of Chinese culture is very poor. His assumptions are all based on anti-chinese propaganda propagated by radical right winged newspapers, and internet sites. If you want to understand Chinese culture and the chinese government's mentality look elsewhere.
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