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31 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
China-Bashing at its worst, February 10, 2008
"[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 naïveté 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 naïve 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.
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185 of 240 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A book that is meant to terrify you!, January 24, 2007
In The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century (which I recommend to anybody who cares about global peace and prosperity), author Will Hutton says, "[China] requires our understanding and engagement - not our enmity and suspicion, which could culminate in self-defeatingly creating the very crisis we fear."
If you want to know such enmity and suspicion to the extreme, read The Coming Wars of China, which is simply a categorisation of the bad stories about China you can find over the internet. (Author's note: "Much of the research conducted for this book was done over the internet.") To give you an example, on page 137-138 the author uses the information on the Banqiao Dam found at Wikipedia - the Banqiao Dam was built in the early 1950s and crested and collapsed when Typhoon Nina hit in 1975 - to prove that it is not a good idea to build the Three Gorges Dam.
In fact, you know you are in for some catastrophic scenarios when you read the author's prediction in the form of a "News Release, October 25, 2012" on the first page of the Introduction:
- "Global stock exchanges were devastated this week by the worst collapse in history as a wave of panic selling followed...a Chinese government announcement that it would no longer finance the mounting budget and trade deficits of a 'profligate United States'."
- "It's been a tough year for Sino-US relations. In January, the US ambassador to the United Nations stormed out in protest over...[China's] veto to shield terrorist regimes such as Iran from diplomatic sanctions in exchange for oil. In March, China's president abruptly cancelled a state visit after the US Treasury Department branded China a 'currency manipulator.' During an unusually hot August that raised collateral fears of global warming, the US Pacific Fleet engaged in a tense, week-long standoff over Taiwan with China's [navy]."
- "Meanwhile, domestic unrest in China continues to escalate... A recent report released by the US Central Intelligence Agency has warned that should such domestic unrest reach a boiling point in China, the result may be 'sharper military conflicts with the United States, Taiwan, and possibly even Japan as Chinese leaders seek to unify the now increasingly fractured nation against a 'common enemy.'"
Of course, if you like betting, you can always buy the book now and check the validity of the author's prediction in the year 2012.
I would not, however, recommend that you do this. Instead, I recommend that you buy Will Hutton's The Writing on the Wall, which is one of the first truly enlightening books on China because of the author's unbiased attitude and approach.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
What is it really about?, August 30, 2008
"The Coming China Wars" by Peter Navarro is probably one of the most advertised China-related books this year. For weeks it nailed the small Adsense box on my Inside-out China blog (apparently Google did a good job of matchmaking), and I got so tired of seeing it all day everyday that I deleted Adsense. The book thus made my blog ad-free.
The question is whether it is worth the advertising money or a reader's time.
In all fairness, this book does highlight some extremely difficult problems that are facing not just the United States, but the entire world. Resource, especially energy shortages, environmental degradation, the threat of international conflict and widespread poverty and inequality are very real and very serious issues.
It is strange, though, that Navarro would attribute so much of the cause of these to China, given that all of these issues have been pointed out again and again by many people since the original publication of The Limits to Growth in 1972. Certainly at that time nobody was expecting that China would be what Navarro repeatedly calls "the world's factory floor."
What is true about China, is that it has been remarkably fast in its track to catch up to the United States. Again, at least since 1972, people have asked the question "what would happen if everyone in the world had the consumption habits of the average American?" Now, with the world's most populous country about ¼ of the way there, perhaps the answer is clearer, and it is certainly frightening. With India, and other countries in Asia, also getting ready to rocket ahead, stopping China in its tracks, as this book admonishes, even if it were possible, is not a good answer.
The world is faced with some real tough times and some very creative solutions are going to be called for. Telling people in China, or any developing nation, to give up getting rich quickly is much like telling American's to give up 80% of their wealth. It generates anger and outrage, but doesn't accomplish anything. The book recommends a very serious effort by the United States government to deal with energy and environmental issues. That is laudable advice, but the American centric focus is not productive. The things being talked about above are global in nature and no single country can carve out a solution in isolation. There is a strong need to cooperate and share human and information resources. More importantly, and this will be very difficult indeed, huge investment by developed countries into developing countries may be the only viable solution. Unfortunately, the book does not provide any useful suggestions for progress on these issues.
It has always amazed me that the people who are most critical of China are precisely those that don't seem to be able to break from the one literary form perfected under Communism. "The Coming China Wars," with the exception of the last chapter, reads very much like the official texts I recited as a child during the Cultural Revolution. No tarnish or impurities have been introduced in this Made in America diatribe against the horrors of the red enemy in the east. Chapters open with quotations from, usually, respectable people or publications, then continue on in declarations that are not backed by any evidence. Presumably the quotations were imbedded in writings that did contain evidence, but Navarro dispenses with that.
In keeping with this form, little that is said in "The Coming China Wars" is explicitly false, it is simply somewhat twisted in its logic. If America does something it is good. If China does something it is bad. It matters little what the thing is, or if it is the same thing. I got a real kick out of the statement: "Whereas the United States focuses on ensuring the security of the international oil market, China has adopted a 'bilateral contracting approach' in which it seeks to lock down the physical supplies of the oil-producing countries." That focus on ensuring security is probably not apparent to most people living outside the United States. And of bilateral agreements, it is best not to forget the Shah of Iran and the response to his ousting that brought Saddam Hussein to the forefront.
If you are going to read the book anyway, you'd be better off skipping the first eleven chapters and going straight to the 12th. After struggling through the text, the last chapter seemed like a breath of fresh air, but it is only in comparison to the rest of the book.
What the last chapter contains is a sequence of policy recommendations that, though rather twisted in their presentation, do have some coherency. To save you a little bit of pain, let me summarize them here:
* Consumers should shy away from products made in China and let retailers and manufacturers know that they are doing this.
* People should pressure government officials to get serious about dealing with issues related to China.
* Businesses should diversify manufacturing away from China and increase quality control on products made in China.
* As a nation the United States should learn to live within its means which means not running a trade or budget deficit.
* The federal government should
1. Push for strict adherence to the principles of free trade.
2. Pass laws making currency manipulation strictly illegal.
3. Prosecute to the full extent of the law anyone involved in piracy or counterfeiting and closely monitor internet sales of pharmaceuticals.
4. Increase the inspection of foods and pass laws to increase accountability for any tainted products.
5. Undertake a massive program to remove the dependence of the US on foreign energy supplies.
6. Condemn China for its abuse of veto power on the UN Security Council, then remove China as a permanent member of that body.
7. Increase spending on programs such as the Voice of America and do more diplomatic work abroad.
8. Agree to strict carbon controls and impose a corresponding carbon tax on all products regardless of country of origin.
9. Prohibit US companies from working with Chinese authorities to identify internet users.
10. Pay more attention to Taiwan and pressure China to decrease its nuclear arsenal.
11. Increase the budget spent on counter espionage.
12. Increase NASA's budget and focus funding on private space ventures.
This was not really put forward as a 12 point plan, but all that expanded spending does seem appropriate for a campaign year.
I have, of course, saved the best policy recommendation for last. This actually falls under the heading of what voters should do and it is:
* "Help spread the word! Give your copy of The Coming China Wars to a friend, or donate your copy to your local library."
And such self-promotion is not out of character with the rest of the book. #
(Xujun Eberlein is the author of Apologies Forthcoming)
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