- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: Profile Books; 2 edition (3 April 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1861973365
- ISBN-13: 978-1861973368
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,378,929 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
*Independent: "a finely researched, important and cautionary contribution to our understanding of contemporary China". *Observer: "provides an invaluable guide to the money-sink that is the contemporary Chinese economy". * Spectator: "the book's clarity of expression will make it hard for even the most determined dreamers to refute". * Daily Telegraph: "a very readable account both of China's economic challenges and of the foolishness of too many Western businessmen over the past decade".
The Independent
The China Dream is a finely researched, important and cautionary contribution to our understanding of contemporary China...
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A stunning eye-opener for all who believe in the China myth,
By Anthony O Brien (Dublin4 Ireland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The China Dream: The Elusive Quest for the Last Great Untapped Market on Earth (Paperback)
In the mid-19th. century,a Lancashire mill-owner reckoned that "if only the Chinese could be persuaded to lenghthen their shirts by a foot, the cotton mills of Lancashire would run for ever." And therein, as Joe Studwell's excellent book, "The China Dream" clearly shows, lies the lure of China. With a quarter of the world's population, China must surely emerge as the largest untapped market on earth? Sadly, not so far.In the 1990's, with Deng Xiaoping's pronouncement "to get rich is glorious" ringing in their ears, western corporations, politicians and businessmen flocked to China with the promise of huge returns on their investments. Completely ignoring the fact that the Chinese economy was still in the tight grip of the communist bureaucratic central planners, the West poured hundreds of billions of dollars into joint ventures which never, ultimately, bore fruit. The China "gold rush" was predicated on the promise of an emerging domestic market which has simply not emerged. Nor is it likely to for the forseeable future, as at least 900 million of the supposed 1.3 billion Chinese "consumers-to-be" are landless peasants with little disposable income. The Chinese government still stands solidly behind the urban industrial behemoths that communist economic theory enshrined . These state-owned enterprises account for a vast slice of China's economic activity, despite the fact that most of them would be bankrupt in any genuinely open market economy. They survive on an ever upward spiral of government-backed bank loans, as many as 70% of which are non-performing, and unlikely ever to be repaid. According to Joe Studwell's analysis, China's record growth figures are a combination of artificially manipulated government pumping and blatantly false statistics. The few companies that have done well in China are those, mainly based in Hong Kong and Taiwan, which use China's extremely cheap labour force for low added-value manufacturing. They are geared entirely to export, but this is an export market which does not do much for China's moribund domestic economy. The huge SOE's account for 40% of mainland China's exports, but the reality is that these products are effectively dumped abroad at a loss which the government controlled banking system is obliged to subsidise. The very few foreign companies that actually profited by their China adventure were those which made things like mobile phones which the Chinese could not yet make for themselves, or those which simply ignored the state-imposed licensing laws and operated illegally. Joe Studwell closes with the extraordinary story of USA's General Motors, who poured US$750 million into a joint-manufacturing scheme to produce Buick cars in China for the domestic market. Expecting to sell 1 million cars per annum by the year 2000, GM's venture peaked at a disappointing 30,000 as the millennium dawned. GM still hopes to do well in China, but not before 2025!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
the china dream,
By
This review is from: The China Dream: The Elusive Quest for the Last Great Untapped Market on Earth: The Elusive Quest for the Greatest Untapped Market on Earth (Paperback)
This book is what you expect it to be - the Chinese seek only to pinch/exploit the wests knowledge and tempt big industries in and then use their own people to run them. It has to be said that it is amazing how large corporations with all their R and D expertise could be drawn into China - how an earth did they think a vastly peasant population could afford Cars or Computers and in one case British beer when they can brew their own for a fraction. Also the vastness of China doesn't seem to have been taken into account. As a result nearly all the ventures failed with huge losses. Then at the end we get a refreshing insight into what really will sell in China - cheap affordable mobile phones since they mostly have no landlines.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
REFRESHING INSIGHT INTO CHINA,
By A Customer
This review is from: The China Dream: The Elusive Quest for the Last Great Untapped Market on Earth (Paperback)
This is a brilliant and refreshing analysis of China. The author takes the reader on a warts and all tour of what is supposedly the world's next big economy. There are so many lessons and surprises to be learnt from this book for anyone contemplating investing or doing business in China.
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