China Price, The: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage - Hardcover

Alexandra Harney

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1594201579 ISBN 13: 9781594201578

Publisher: PENGUIN PRESS, 2008

Synopsis

A landmark eyewitness expose' of how China's factory economy competes for Western business by selling out its workers, its environment, and its future In The China Price, acclaimed Financial Times correspondent Alex Harney uncovers the truth about how China is able to offer such amazingly low prices to the rest of the world. What she has discovered is a brutal, Hobbesian world in which intense pricing pressure from Western companies combines with ubiquitous corruption and a lack of transparency to exact an unseen and unconscionable toll in human misery and environmental damage. In a way, Harney shows, what goes on in China is inevitable. In a country with almost no transparency, where graft is institutionalized and workers have little recourse to the rule of law, incentives to lie about business practices vastly outweigh incentives to tell the truth. Harney reveals that despite a decade of monitoring factories, outsiders all too often have no idea of the conditions under which goods from China are made. She exposes the widespread practice of using a dummy or model factory as a company's false window out to the world, concealing a vast number of illegal factories operating completely off the books. Some Western companies are better than others about sniffing out such deception, but too many are perfectly happy to embrace plausible deniability as long as the prices remain so low. And in the gold-rush atmosphere that's infected the country, in which everyone is clamoring to get rich at once and corruption is rampant, it's almost impossible for the Chinese government's own underfunded regulatory mechanisms to do much good at all. But perhaps the most important revelation in The China Price is how fast change is coming, one way or another.

About this title

Product Description:

Acclaimed Financial Times correspondent Alex Harney uncovers the truth about how China is able to offer such amazingly low prices to the rest of the world. What she has uncovered is a brutal, Hobbesian world in which pricing pressure from Western companies combines with ubiquitous corruption and lack of transparency to exact an unseen and unconscionable toll in human misery and environmental damage.

Review:

"With unusual insight and reportorial perseverance Alexandra Harney presents the inconvenient truths about China and globalization that flat worlders have overlooked. This book is very important and is a must read for those who want to understand how today's world really works." --Clyde Prestowitz, President of the Economic Strategy Institute and the author of "Three Billion New Capitalists,"

"This gripping, beautifully reported book lays bare the tumult of hope, fear and skullduggery that exists behind the ubiquitous "Made in China" label. It should spur manufacturers, investors and consumers to worry a lot more about where everyday products come from." -James Kynge, author of "China Shakes the World" "Harney has given us an almost forensic field guide to the strikingly low cost of labor intensive goods manufacturing in China. By systematically sifting through the factors that cheapen the production process, she has denied us the luxury of uncertainty. Some may find the ethics and inevitability of Chinese production conditions debatable, but no business person involved in global sourcing will be credible claiming ignorance of the basic facts in light of Harney's work." -Daniel Rosen, Principal, China Strategic Advisory, and Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics "The gritty, corrupt reality of the Chinese economic miracle is the great business story of our time and Alexandra Harney has got it. She has explored the factories, dormitories and urban slums to reveal the devastating cost-to the planet, to American workers, and to Chinese citizens-of the China Price." -Karl Taro Greenfeld, author of "China Syndrome: The True Story of the 21st Century's First Great Epidemic" "With unusual insight and reportorial perseverance Alexandra Harney presents the inconvenient truths about China and globalization that flat worlders have overlooked. This book is very important and is a must read for those who want to understand how today's world really works." --Clyde Prestowitz, President of the Economic Strategy Institute and the author of "Three Billion New Capitalists,"

aPresents the inconvenient truths about China and globalization that flat worlders have overlooked.a
aClyde Prestowitz, author of "Three Billion New Capitalists"
aAnyone running a company that outsources manufacturing to China, or is thinking of doing so, needs to read this book.a
a"Financial Times"
aThe gritty, corrupt reality of the Chinese economic miracle is the great business story of our time and Alexandra Harney has got it.a
aKarl Taro Greenfeld, author of "China Syndrome"

"Presents the inconvenient truths about China and globalization that flat worlders have overlooked."
-Clyde Prestowitz, author of Three Billion New Capitalists
"Anyone running a company that outsources manufacturing to China, or is thinking of doing so, needs to read this book."
-Financial Times
"The gritty, corrupt reality of the Chinese economic miracle is the great business story of our time and Alexandra Harney has got it."
-Karl Taro Greenfeld, author of China Syndrome

About this edition

• Publisher: PENGUIN PRESS
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1594201579
• ISBN 13: 9781594201578
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352