Customer Reviews

Fast Boat to China: Corporate Flight and the Consequences of Free Trade; Lessons from Shanghai

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This book is critical of the dynamics of offshoring, but it is not just another anti-China polemic. Instead, the author undertook extensive research in China, interviewing both employees and their foreign employers, and carefully analyzed the thoughts and motivations of all parties.

He draws some fascinating conclusions that you won't find elsewhere:

- Even in China, India, and Taiwan, employers use the threat of offshoring to hold down wages and make employees work harder. Workers in different countries currently have no way to organize and counter this pressure.

- Many of the cultural sterotypes about Chinese workers are better explained as logical responses to the prevailing work environment and labor market.

- Chinese workers assume that their favorable circumstances are temporary, and that companies will soon move on to the next low-cost region.

- Taiwanese managers have a reputation for being too demanding on their Chinese employees.

- Taiwan is experiencing offshoring to China to a much greater extent than the US.

He also does a good job presenting many well-known criticisms of globalization:

- Free Trade is a gross misnomer, given the vast incentives that governments use to attract investment

- China's size means that its low labor and environmental standards can drag conditions down everywhere.

- Chinese nationalist sentiment is common. Everyone there is taught that economic and technological self-sufficiency are a necessary bulwark against foreign menace. China's explicit goal is to build its high-tech capabilities.

- Companies can now move offshore quickly, even when the move involves "knowlege transfer".

Ross explores the origins, current state and possible directions of "outsourcing" focusing mostly on the Asian continent. The impact of the existing and emerging trends are presented without any political bias or apparent hidden agenda. That is perhaps most remarkably refreshing aspect of the book. A significant number of books on this topic are typically political and biased. For each "debatable" issue, Ross presents arguments from both sides and discusses them in the context of his personal interviews with workers. The chapter focusing on India-China relations and possibilities is perhaps the best written chapter in the book, and is the topic is treated in a fairly novel way. If you want an unbiased look on the impacts of outsourcing from a worker's perspective, this is a must-read. Ross uses a very simple, narrative style that makes the book engaging and easy-to-read. The book is pretty detailed and you can expect to spend some time reading it (a good thing!). The notes/citation section at the end of the book is comprehensive and useful for the more serious reader. A must read.

Ross is usually ahead of the curve and it looks as if he has done it again. Instead of joining the chorus against outsourcing he has done his homework in China, interviewing the people who are supposed to have taken our jobs. I don't know another book that describes what the offshore impact of free trade looks like, or who benefits most from it. The on-the-scene reporting is sharp and detailed, and I agree with the Publishers Weekly reviewer that even more of it would have been welcome. I came away from the book with a lot more questions in my mind about jobs and globalization. Everything that happens in China now affects all of us, and Ross nails the role that corporations are playing in this transnational game.

This is an excellent book. For anyone interested in business and trade, obviously we need to keep our eyes on what's happening in China. Ross offers a very relevant critique of current business models and at the same time provides captivating history and culture lessons. Also, it's really well written, the author has a very nice style.

Despite its Sino-centric title, the book is really a broader study into the politics and economics of globalization, particularly of "off-shoring," the sending of jobs from one country to another. However, like many students of China, Ross was so engaged by it that the work winds up being truly a recent history of the high-tech industry in both China and Taiwan. Indian entrepreneurs too, make their entrance periodically. The work is fascinating in its detail. Ross lived in Shanghai for over a year and conducted hundreds of interviews ranging from American ex-patriate executives to Chinese and Taiwanese engineers in high-tech firms in coastal and inland China, as well as in Taiwan. We are given succinct summaries of the growth of the industry in many local regions of China.

Fast Boat to China is not a how-to-succeed-in-doing-business-in-China sort of book. But it should be read by anyone contemplating jobs being moved to China, whether the job is theirs at present, or the factory where the job now is performed. It also should be of interest to anyone who wants to get beyond the screen of stereotyped name-calling that often serves as the dominant conversation in the frequent clashes between Chinese and American interests.

For a full review see Interface, Volume 7, Issue 1.

Rarely we find a book like Andrew Ross's present a fair and balance view of US-China trade relationship. I think Andrew present China's side of arguement really well without demonizing the Chinese. Also, his analysis of US-China trade relationship is unusually sophisticated which is rare among American writers. Usually when it comes to issues regarding China, American authors do not try to understand where the Chinese stands. Not from Andrew Ross. Andrew understands the complexity of US-China relationship, instead of using the "we are right, the Chinese are moron" attitude.

I also like his analysis of relationship between Indians and Chinese. Unlike many other authors, he does not try to compare which side is better. Instead, he tells us the complexity of the relationships of the two.

Ross correctly points out that China is the subject of many concerns - growth in military spending, environmental degradation, resource acquisition, and loss of jobs in the U.S. He then goes on to assert (correctly, in my opinion) that the most telling development is that the number of foreign-sponsored R&D centers in China has jumped from 200 to 600 between 2002 and 2004 - thus, China's impact will not be limited to low-end jobs, and can be expected to increase in impact.

Finally, Ross goes on to provide evidence that the insecurity created for American employees by Chinese workers is also imposed upon current Chinese workers via those further inland who have not yet acquired jobs - eg. underemployed farmers and those thrown out of work by rationalization of formerly government employers.

The bad news is that this pretty well sums up the book's 280+ pages. The good news is that having read this review, you no longer have any need to read it.

The author obviously doesn't understand basic economics. He distinguishes between free trade, where the parties involved in cooperation find fairness, and fair trade, where elitists such as himself deem fairness for all. Of course, the only way elitists can dictate what they deem is to insert government intervention and take the "freedom" out of "free trade."

My suggestion to the author is to take Econ 101 before writing on economic issues.