Add Prime to get Fast, Free delivery

Available instantly

Hardcover
$17.81

Paperback
$7.20 - $15.29

$17.81 with 32 percent savings

List Price: $26.00

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Wednesday, January 8 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

$$17.81 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

Amazon

Ships from

Amazon

Sold by

LiteraVault

Sold by

LiteraVault

Returns

Returnable until Jan 31, 2025

Returns

Returnable until Jan 31, 2025

For the 2024 holiday season, eligible items purchased between November 1 and December 31, 2024 can be returned until January 31, 2025.

Read full return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

$9.20

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

Book is in good condition and may include underlining highlighting and minimal wear. The book can also include From the library of labels. May not contain miscellaneous items toys dvds etc. . We offer 100% money back guarantee and 24 7 customer service. Free 2-day shipping with Amazon Prime! Book is in good condition and may include underlining highlighting and minimal wear. The book can also include From the library of labels. May not contain miscellaneous items toys dvds etc. . We offer 100% money back guarantee and 24 7 customer service. Free 2-day shipping with Amazon Prime! See less

FREE delivery January 16 - 31 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or fastest delivery January 14 - 28

$$17.81 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Sold by Zoom Books Company and Fulfilled by Amazon.

Add to List

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

$17.80 with 32 percent savings

List Price: $26.00

FREE pickup January 11 - 21 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or fastest pickup January 11 - 18

Amazon Locker - Pyrus

1.76 mi | Ashburn 20147

How pickup works

$$17.81 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Sold by

HMK TRADING CORP

Sold by

HMK TRADING CORP

Returns

Returnable until Jan 31, 2025

Returns

Returnable until Jan 31, 2025

For the 2024 holiday season, eligible items purchased between November 1 and December 31, 2024 can be returned until January 31, 2025.

Read full return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

Other sellers on Amazon

New & Used (61) from $6.22 & FREE Shipping

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Color:

To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Amy Chua

Follow

World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability Hardcover – December 24, 2002

by Amy Chua (Author)

4.5 234 ratings

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$17.81","priceAmount":17.81,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"17","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"81","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"CwuZGbyyWgFJ0NJg19jmdfL8LxSn%2Fkr7mQ%2FPBVmL2YE8cF511MQiGZOGMA%2Fn9GrULO1nXifewE%2F7eJruC%2FmxhwYQZW88Z8f9KkKAPvjkq4CGOdS%2FS64%2BpnHREyh0u2AN0Cwx7dTeSHelOkU5UaG21%2BvtnqKGFepqugat6P%2FUzF71KLihpAIm1yLThOFDiqR%2F","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$9.20","priceAmount":9.20,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"9","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"20","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"CwuZGbyyWgFJ0NJg19jmdfL8LxSn%2Fkr74sr%2F7Fvigak6ROeWPzNKD8Oj30ghtT7hN%2FQitXhc%2B6oms5WMrLeHrBMFuwIF5K5gUprXSFOKnG55XdVFxaFkZzaUkrqKZQVtWWMoE9LmcLnKP3Iu0MoSGLl%2FZwE%2Fcp2awW3WRrFkXVfhNhAGqneDHzr1t8DncnUe","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}],"desktop_buybox_group_2":[{"displayPrice":"$17.80","priceAmount":17.80,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"17","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"80","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"CwuZGbyyWgFJ0NJg19jmdfL8LxSn%2Fkr7BNI7nWxmnofU9Ci8Z9HQrd%2BsDkAZxhJQHbvHZyrUbsfJec9RQtpntZ3XJtxh7mLUiXbWYQnGURWD3kzo8ZW5WzDTL9Z%2FLR6L9hh41%2BDx1zxMJQ6hBx51fpsM%2BSYpoqJsPi2M%2F7wga0%2FooOAUelwHA6vvXNGDTqdk","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"PICKUP","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":2}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

Every few years, a book is published about America's role in the world and the changing contest of global affairs that gets everyone thinking in a new way. Amy Chua's WORLD ON FIRE will have exactly that kind of impact on the debate of how the world has changed in light of the events of last September.

Apostles of globalization, such as Thomas Friedman, believe that exporting free markets and democracy to other countries will increase peace and prosperity throughout the developing world; Amy Chua is the anti-Thomas Friedman. Her book wil be a dash of cold water in the face of globalists, techno-utopians, and liberal triumphalists as she shows that just the opposite has happened: When global markets open, ethnic conflict worsens and politics turns ugly and violent.

Drawing on examples from around the world--from Africa and Asia to Russia and Latin America--Chua examines how free markets do not spread wealth evenly throughout the whole of these societies. Instead they produce a new class of extremely wealthy plutocrats--individuals as rich as nations. Almost always members of a minority group--Chinese in the Philippines, Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, whites in Latin America, Indians in East Africa, Jews in post-communist Russia--these "market-dominant minorities" have become targets of violent hatred. Adding democracy to this volatile mix unleashes supressed ethnic hatreds and brings to power ethnonationalist governments that pursue aggressive policies of confiscation and revenge. Chua further shows how individual countries are often viewed as dominant minorities, explaining the phenomena of ethnic resentment in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the rising tide of anti-American sentiment around the world. This more than anything accounts for the visceral hatred of Americans that has been expressed in recent acts of terrorism.

Bold and original, WORLD ON FIRE is a perceptive examination of the far-reaching effects of exporting capitalism with democracy and its potentially catastrophic results.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A professor at Yale Law School, Chua eloquently fuses expert analysis with personal recollections to assert that globalization has created a volatile concoction of free markets and democracy that has incited economic devastation, ethnic hatred and genocidal violence throughout the developing world. Chua illustrates the disastrous consequences arising when an accumulation of wealth by "market dominant minorities" combines with an increase of political power by a disenfranchised majority. Chua refutes the "powerful assumption that markets and democracy go hand in hand" by citing specific examples of the turbulent conditions within countries such as Indonesia, Russia, Sierra Leone, Bolivia and in the Middle East. In Indonesia, Chua contends, market liberalization policies favoring wealthy Chinese elites instigated a vicious wave of anti-Chinese violence from the suppressed indigenous majority. Chua describes how "terrified Chinese shop owners huddled behind locked doors while screaming Muslim mobs smashed windows, looted shops and gang-raped over 150 women, almost all of them ethnic Chinese." Chua blames the West for promoting a version of capitalism and democracy that Westerners have never adopted themselves. Western capitalism wisely implemented redistributive mechanisms to offset potential ethnic hostilities, a practice that has not accompanied the political and economic transitions in the developing world. As a result, Chua explains, we will continue to witness violence and bloodshed within the developing nations struggling to adopt the free markets and democratic policies exported by the West. (On sale Dec. 24)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Globalization is not good for developing countries, insists Yale law professor Chua. It aggravates ethnic tensions by creating a small but abundantly wealthy new class and it's stimulating a new wave of anti-Americanism.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A brilliant, groundbreaking assault on the prevailing wisdom that the American political and economic model is a one-stop solution to the world's woes."
-Will Blythe, Elle Magazine

"Chua frequently fuses expert analysis with personal recollections to assert that globalization has created a volatile concoction of free markets and democracy that has incited economic devastation, ethnic hatred and genocidal violence throughout the developing world.
-Publishers Weekly

"A nuanced contribution to the debate over whether free markets spread democracy or merely advance the McDonaldsization of the globe. Chua defends her case well (and adds a damning footnote to the history of Enron along the way). Globalism is a fact of modern life, she concludes, but one destined to yield much bloodshed in the years to come."
-Kirkus Reviews

"This hard-hitting book should be read by everyone who still imagines that free markets can solve all the world's ills."
-Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

From the Inside Flap

Every few years, a book is published about America's role in the world and the changing contest of global affairs that gets everyone thinking in a new way. Amy Chua's WORLD ON FIRE will have exactly that kind of impact on the debate of how the world has changed in light of the events of last September.

Apostles of globalization, such as Thomas Friedman, believe that exporting free markets and democracy to other countries will increase peace and prosperity throughout the developing world; Amy Chua is the anti-Thomas Friedman. Her book wil be a dash of cold water in the face of globalists, techno-utopians, and liberal triumphalists as she shows that just the opposite has happened: When global markets open, ethnic conflict worsens and politics turns ugly and violent.

Drawing on examples from around the world--from Africa and Asia to Russia and Latin America--Chua examines how free markets do not spread wealth evenly throughout the whole of these societies. Instead they produce a new class of extremely wealthy plutocrats--individuals as rich as nations. Almost always members of a minority group--Chinese in the Philippines, Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, whites in Latin America, Indians in East Africa, Jews in post-communist Russia--these "market-dominant minorities" have become targets of violent hatred. Adding democracy to this volatile mix unleashes supressed ethnic hatreds and brings to power ethnonationalist governments that pursue aggressive policies of confiscation and revenge. Chua further shows how individual countries are often viewed as dominant minorities, explaining the phenomena of ethnic resentment in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the rising tide of anti-American sentiment around the world. This more than anything accounts for the visceral hatred of Americans that has been expressed in recent acts of terrorism.

Bold and original, WORLD ON FIRE is a perceptive examination of the far-reaching effects of exporting capitalism with democracy and its potentially catastrophic results.

From the Back Cover

"A brilliant, groundbreaking assault on the prevailing wisdom that the American political and economic model is a one-stop solution to the world's woes."
-Will Blythe, Elle Magazine

"Chua frequently fuses expert analysis with personal recollections to assert that globalization has created a volatile concoction of free markets and democracy that has incited economic devastation, ethnic hatred and genocidal violence throughout the developing world.
-Publishers Weekly

"A nuanced contribution to the debate over whether free markets spread democracy or merely advance the McDonaldsization of the globe. Chua defends her case well (and adds a damning footnote to the history of Enron along the way). Globalism is a fact of modern life, she concludes, but one destined to yield much bloodshed in the years to come."
-Kirkus Reviews

"This hard-hitting book should be read by everyone who still imagines that free markets can solve all the world's ills."
-Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

CHAPTER 1

Rubies and Rice Paddies

Chinese Minority Dominance in Southeast Asia

In Burma,* tattoos are traditionally used to protect against snakebite. In 1930 and again in 1938, enraged Burmans applied these tattoos to achieve invulnerability against bullets and then proceeded to slaughter Indians in an orgy of violence. Even monks were said to have participated. At the time, Indians, along with British colonialists, were a starkly economically dominant ethnic minority in Burma and the object of mass antipathy. Killing Indians was an act simultaneously of revenge and nationalist pride among a long-downtrodden people. As a contemporary observer put it, "The average Burman on the street felt that at least once he had proved his superiority over the Indian."

Today there is only a small community of Indians left in Burma. Hundreds of thousands fled in the sixties, in response to another wave of ethnic violence. But a new market-dominant minority has taken their place, far wealthier than the Indians ever were.

Markets, Junta Style, and the Chinese Takeover

Burma has one of the most repugnant military governments in the world--the State Law and Order Restoration Council, or SLORC,** which seized power in September 1988 after gunning down thousands of unarmed demonstrators. SLORC held multiparty elections in 1990, but then refused to honor the landslide victory of 1991 Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, placing her instead under house arrest and earning the widespread hatred of the Burmese people.

From its inception, SLORC has been aggressively pro-market. Reversing three decades of disastrous, socialist central planning, SLORC in 1989 launched "the Burmese way to capitalism." Apart from enriching corrupt SLORC generals, who are all ethnic Burmans, the ensuing decade of marketization brought virtually no benefits to the indigenous population, the vast majority of whom still engage in traditional agriculture. One group, however, has benefited tremendously.

Since Burma's shift to a market-oriented, open-door economy, both Rangoon, the modern capital, and Mandalay, the ancient City of Gems and royal seat of the last two Burmese kings, have been taken over by ethnic Chinese. Some of these Chinese are from families that have lived in Burma for generations. Like the Indians but to a lesser extent, the Chinese were disproportionately wealthy during the colonial period (1886-1948), which was characterized by essentially laissez-faire policies superimposed on Burma's traditional rural economy. Although much of their wealth was confiscated during the socialist era (1962-88), the Chinese remained active in Burma's black markets and, in a few cases, opium trafficking.

In Burma's new market economy, the Sino-Burmese minority have been transformed almost overnight into a garishly prosperous business community. In addition, tens of thousands of poor but entrepreneurial immigrants from China, sweeping down from nearby Yunnan, have bought up the identity papers of dead Burmans for as little as three hundred dollars, becoming Burmese nationals overnight. Today, ethnic Chinese Burmese--looking uncomfortable in longyis, the traditional Burmese unisex sarongs--own nearly all of Mandalay's shops, hotels, restaurants, and prime commercial and residential real estate. The same is more or less true in Rangoon. Only a tiny, dying handful of Burman-owned establishments (mainly printing houses and cheroot factories) are left, dwarfed by the Chinese-built and Chinese-owned high-rise buildings around them.

Typical of Southeast Asia, the Chinese dominate Burmese commerce at every level of society. Massive joint ventures--such as the Shangri-La Hotel deal between Lo Hsing-han, the Sino-Burmese chairman of the Asia World conglomerate, and Sino-Malaysian tycoon Robert Kuok--have turned Mandalay and Rangoon into booming hubs for mainland Chinese and Southeast Asian Chinese business networks. (Non-Burmese Chinese investors are easy to spot. They're the ones not in longyis but in cowboy boots and sunglasses, walking around with bottles of Johnny Walker Red.) At the humbler end of the spectrum, Chinese hawkers make an excellent living selling cheap bicycle tires from China--often more than thirty thousand tires a month--for rickshaws in Burma. Nor is Chinese dominance only an urban phenomenon. After two years of severe flooding in southern China, large numbers of Chinese farmers--over a million, some estimate--poured into northern Burma. These new Burmese "citizens" now grow rice on the cleared hill country they have taken over. Entire Chinese villages have sprung up in this way.

With the United States boycotting Burma on human rights grounds, globalization for Burma has had a disproportionately Chinese face, although the presence of French and German foreign investors can be felt as well. "Name a large infrastructure project anywhere in Myanmar these days and there is a strong possibility it will be in the hands of Chinese contractors," observed The Economist a few years ago. "Chinese engineers are working on improvements to the highway from Mandalay to Yangon. Chinese companies are developing the railway line from Mandalay to Myitkyina, near the Chinese border, and the line from Mandalay to the capital. With the help of chain gangs from Myanmar's prisons, they are also building a line from Ye to Tavoy in Myanmar's far south-east. . . . Against international competition, Chinese contractors have won the contract to build a big bridge across the Chindwin river. Other Chinese ventures range from a new international airport for Mandalay to housing for the armed forces and 30 irrigation dams. It was the Chinese, in association with Siemens, who last year installed a ground satellite station serving the capital."

The Chinese in Burma dominate not only legitimate trade and business but also more sordid black market activities. Indeed, the line between licit and illicit commercial activity in Burma, as in many developing countries, is often vague. Some of the country's most influential businessmen are former--possibly current--drug kingpins. "Drug traffickers who once spent their days leading mule trains down jungle paths are now leading lights in Burma's new market economy," lamented former U.S. secretary of state Madeline Albright a few years ago.

Burma-born, ethnic Chinese tycoon Lo Hsing-han, for example, was an infamous opium warlord in the 1960s, thought to be responsible for much of the heroin that wound up in American veins. According to Burma scholar Bertil Lintner, Lo started off in his native Kokang Province as a lieutenant to the pistol-toting lesbian opium queen, Olive Yang. In 1989, Lo cut a deal with SLORC, persuading fellow ethnic warlords to accept a cease-fire with the junta in exchange for valuable timber and mineral concessions. Today, Lo's "Asia World" commercial empire includes a container shipping business, Rangoon port buildings, and tollbooths on the resurfaced Burma Road. Lo insists that he is now a legitimate businessman. "Since the market economy appeared in Myanmar," he explains, "it is easier to earn money trading vehicles on the Chinese border."6 Whether or not Lo is clean--and most Western officials believe otherwise--Burma's "Chinese underworld" remains as dominant in drug traffic and money laundering as Chinese merchants are in Mandalay's booming, lawful markets.

Chinese Plutocrats, Burman Misery

Ever since SLORC embraced markets, Burma has been hemorrhaging natural resources, especially teak, jade, and rubies. Apart from SLORC generals, the beneficiaries have been almost exclusively ethnic Chinese and a handful of hill tribe smugglers.

Burma's forests hold more than 70 percent of the world's teak. The Burmese teak is a magnificent tree, sometimes reaching 150 feet, with opposing egg-shaped leaves and clusters of white flowers. Its timber is dark, heavy, oily, of unusual strength and durability. Long the wood of Burmese royalty, immortalized by Rudyard Kipling ("Elephints a-pilin' teak / In the sludgy, squdgy creek, / Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was 'arf afraid to speak! / On the road to Mandalay . . . "), teak today is America's wood of choice for boat decking and salad bowls.

For over a decade now, Burma's hill tribes, particularly the Shan, have been selling enormous quantities of teak to Chinese buyers at fire-sale prices. Technically these sales are contraband, violating SLORC's official monopoly on timber exports. In reality, SLORC generals struck a deal with hill tribe insurgents a decade ago, granting them economic freedom in exchange for a cease-fire. As a result, since 1989, convoys of trucks loaded with teak logs--sometimes over ten feet in diameter, from trees hundreds of years old--travel daily, snaking along the mountainous old Burma Road across the border into China's Yunnan Province.

Meanwhile, SLORC's official timber policy has been aggressive globally-oriented marketization under government concessions. Insisting that teak logging will facilitate Burma's economic development, SLORC has invited the full support of the private sector in promoting "forestry" (i.e., deforestation), even exempting forestry exports from commercial tax. Along with European and Chinese foreign investors, most of SLORC's business partners are Sino-Burmese tycoons who have close ties to Thai Chinese logging companies. Leading industrialist "May Flower" Kyaw Win, born to a poor Chinese family in the Northern Shan State, is a prominent example. Since moving into the timber business in 1990, Kyaw Win--also the managing director of Yangon Airlines and often spotted with top-ranking generals--has become one of the wealthiest men in Burma.

By contrast, ethnic Burmans have profited almost not at all from the country's market-driven deforestation. Shan tribespeople continue to earn money smuggling teak to Yunnan, but adding insult to injury, the Shan, along with t...

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Doubleday; First Edition (December 24, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0385503024
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0385503020
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.75 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.39 x 1.16 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #444,538 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #384 in Political Economy
- #731 in Economic Conditions (Books)
- #2,963 in Ethnic Studies (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 234 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Amy Chua

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School and author of debut novel THE GOLDEN GATE, coming 9/19/23. She is also the bestselling author of several nonfiction books, including World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (2003), Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--and Why They Fall (2007), The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain The Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America (2013), Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations (2018), and her runaway international bestselling memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011), which has been translated into over 30 languages.

Related products with free delivery on eligible orders

Page 1 of 1Start overPage 1 of 1

Sponsored | Try Prime for unlimited fast, free shipping

Customer reviews

234 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Review this product

Write a customer review

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

BlackJack21
Globalization and racism go hand & hand:
Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2011
Verified Purchase
Amy Chua definitely takes you down the rabbit hole in her national best seller "World On Fire." She makes a convincing case that globalization (a.k.a free market democracy) is one of the main causes of racial, ethnic and religious strife in the world today. She argues that the free market system has become an insalubrious mess, metastasizing into forms of economic strangulation, hegemony and fascism, and all the while causing starvation and antagonism in third-world nation states. In most cases the symptoms caused are egregious in nature for the sole purpose of profiteering.

In the book Chua explains that in most cases the rich minorities take advantage and exploit the downtrodden indigenous majority, and that the rich are usually from other countries.
Such is the case in the Philippines, with the Chinese minority controlling most of the wealth in that country. Chua also points out that the Chinese minority has controlling interest in Vietnam, Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, and other South-East Asian States. But, the U.S. has interest in these countries as well. Also, the U.S. imports precious gems, oil, natural gas, narcotics and teak wood, which come at a heavy price, and that price is human life.
Many people are killed for these commodities, such as the Karen people in Burma who are slaughter by the State Peace and Development Council (SPCD.) The SPCD are also working in conduit with members of the corporatocracy to procure commodities that are on Karen lands. Plus, we must not forget that the Suharto regime in Indonesia nearly committed genocide in East Timor, during the Gerald Ford administration and beyond.

Chua also writes about the seven most powerful oligarchs in Russia, which she points out that six of these oligarchs just happened to be Jewish. She also writes about how these oligarchs supported Vladimir Putin during his presidential run, but as soon as he was elected he turned on them, and started to confiscate their property because they were draining and exploiting the Russian economy. The Russian citizenry were being disenfranchised according to Putin, and with alacrity, Putin managed to shut down television and radio networks, while arresting people. As a matter of fact, Putin turned on "Jewish media moguls Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky in a murky corporate coup in 2001."
According to Chua, Putin made promises to the Russian people that he would "bring the house in order" and "move the oligarchs away from power." The western powers started to fear what Putin was doing and accused him of reverting back to the old Soviet Union style of governance, which was dichotomous to the free market way of life that Russia allegedly embraced after the Cold War ended. Furthermore, he was accused of being anti-Semitic, but there was no evidence to show this since Jewish immigrants have emigrated from Russia to Israel since the founding of the Israeli state in 1948. So, it wasn't a question of singling out Jews, it was about balancing the scales of the economy, creating a gemütlich environment for Russia...so they say... However, I am a little skeptical about this.

Amy Chua also engages on the subject of South African apartheid, and how the Oppenhiemers and Rhodes' De Beers Corporation dominated the diamond industry, while the white Afrikaners owned most of the land and controlled the government until the African National Congress and Mandela ascended to power. And De Beers is still exploiting and disenfranchising Africans. One case in particular is Namibia.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe is another country under fire and Robert Mugabe is slowly trying to change the situation by incrementally usurping territory from the white minority that owns much of the land that he and his people feel they are not entitled to because of how they acquired it. Mugabe's methods are questionable, but the reasons may not be.

Moreover, The Ibo tribe in Angola dominates the wealth in that country. Angola suffered enormously because of the Portuguese onslaught during the Transatlantic Slave trade, and the remnants of that time period still reverberates to this day. Child slave labor is still practiced. Children are made to work in ungodly conditions, while being beaten, and abused in some instances. And that's just for starters.

Anyhow, globalization has led to democracy promotion, nation building, and more tax increases which means forced governance upon the general populace with sanguineous results in other countries. These are the real reasons why America goes to war overseas, while hemorrhaging trillions of dollars at a whim. Plus, having hundreds of military bases all over the world.
All the U.S. is doing is fighting wars and occupying other countries for the IMF, The World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, while the poor civilian populations around the world are being killed in the auspices of freedom and democracy, but the question remains... whose democracy are we fighting for? My guess is it's for the ones who can pay for it. The definition of all of this is fascism.

Amy Chua really makes you think about the world we live in and she's asking everyone to be cognizant of their surroundings in the hopes that we will change our behavior. America isn't the only country at fault as some have come to contemplate, but it is the world's leading superpower and it needs to take the reigns in solving these problems. The corporatocracy cannot continue negative business practices without the world community, and the environment paying the ultimate price.

Hate breeds more hate and greed depletes everything, what a great read and learning experience!!!

Five Stars!!!!

Read more

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
FCRichelieu
A Wake-up Call to Knock the US out of Naievity and Complacency
Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2013
Verified Purchase
This is an extraordinary book by a Yale law professor. It is very well researched, and presented forcefully and persuasively. The author's discussion of the serious issue of the backlash in ethnic hatred and global instability is indeed a badly needed (though alas insufficient) wake-up call to knock the US out of its naivety and complacency.

The book reads like an academic dissertation. Its style is academic and legal, with old English (eg 'compleat' and 'writ large') sprinkled throughout. It is as though a lawyer is presenting her case in front of the court. As such, it is very serious reading, and not something that can be done at leisure. Ms Amy Chua has presented a most convincing case, which is backed up by very thorough research. As a retired civil servant in Hong Kong who has been involved in trade issues, I have been an advocate of free trade and free market all my professional life. After reading Ms Chua's book, I must confess my naivety.

I would say, though, that the author has been too mild in referring to the US's ideology and action as 'exporting free market democracy'. The US has, in fact, been thrusting free market democracy down the throat of everybody else. This has been done with a missionary zeal that is more foreceful, and with far wider influence, than the crusade in the old days. In the case of the crusde, the faith/ideology was Christianity; today the faith/ideology is Free Market Democracy. In the civilised world, we may hate the atrocities perpetrated by one Saddam Hussein. But that does not give the US the right to invade Iraq. Even after a long occupation of Iraq, the US could not find any 'weapons of mass destruction' that were supposed to be Iraq's sin to be punished. And it has taken a Yale law professor to point out eloquently how the free market democracy that the US foists on Iraq has not been working.

While Ms Chua has presented an excellent case of the very serious problems of naively foisting free market democracy on other countries, and indeed the world, she has been relatively brief in discussing remedies or alternatives. This is understandable, because the world has yet to find feasible alternatives. As starters, there are some interesting and helpful suggestions in the book. It will take the world a great deal more careful study, thinking through, and creative imagination to arrive at sustainable remedies.

This is Ms Amy Chua's second book that I have read, after her 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Motehr'. She has not disappointed.

Read more

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Hugh Wang
Stimulating read
Reviewed in Canada on May 4, 2021
Verified Purchase
Puts the world in context

Read more
Report
LauraBalin
Take Income-Inequality add Majority Rule and Stir The Pot..... Et voila!
Reviewed in Germany on August 22, 2018
Verified Purchase
The book should have been called
“World on Fire: Exporting Free Market Economics AND Majority Rule – American Nation Building: A Recipe for Desaster”

Any one who liked The Bell Curve (1994 Herrnstein & Murray) and The Birth of Plenty (2004 Bernstein) will love World on Fire (2003 Amy Chua). Hands On!

To any one who loved Guns, Germs & Steel (1997 Diamond) and/or subscribes differences in outcome to (systemic) racism, i.e. some allegedly obvious Sino-Judeo-Caucasian Conspiracy to keep brown and black people down, Hands Off!

A note to the definition of Democracy the book uses, that might be lost to the American reader, who takes the direct election of candidates (two-party system; responsible to voters only, not to party, and the subsequent absence of party soldiers); and an over-arching, un-democratic, sassy oligarchy, who speaks truth to power, for granted, i.e. the federal judiciary, and calls the resulting system democracy, but it's actually a republic. (Republic = any mix of forms of governments)

That mix of democratic players and oligarchic umpires/referees is really only part of the American experience, i.e. American Exceptionalism, and does not form part of any democracy's reality in the rest of the world. So it goes, that the book tacitly implies the definition of democracy as understood outside of America:
one person, one vote; majority rule; judges facially called independent in a teeth-less laundry list contained in the constitution, but really rather need to know their place, or else....
It follows that any Bill of Rights is dead letters, wholly dependent on the goodness of the hearts of legislators. What can go wrong! As Justice Scalia noted: "Every country has a Bill of Rights....."

Nothing in this review shall be construed to imply that an independent judiciary will most definately use its independence to say NO to the majority, and protect the individual and thus (economic) minority rights against the majority, but only if a judiciary can, is there a chance it will.

Whenever majorities can, they will crush minorities*. That’s why human history is a history of minorities/oligarchies keeping a lid on majorities. And here comes democracy, unleashing that dormant demon.

* let alone tinorities like Gays and Jews

Read more
Report
M. McManus
Novel take on the effects of the spread of democracy and free market capitalism
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 13, 2009
Verified Purchase
The premise of the book is that the spread of free market capitalism and democracy are assumed to be desirable by most policy makers. "Free markets and free men" being the maxim. However, Chua argues that free market capitalism allows the concentration of large amounts of wealth in the hands of a privileged minority. By contrast, democracy concentrates power in the hands of the majority. The majority will naturally resent the wealth of the minority and will see democracy as a means to seize the wealth of the minority. Thus, the spread of free market capitalism and democracy can actually be a bad thing in some parts of the world.

This friction between the poor majority and rich minority are especially severe where there is an ethnic dimension to these identities. Chua argues that in many countries, certain ethnic minorities often do disproportionately well economically in sharp contrast to the ethnic native majority community in which it resides. For example, the whites of Zimbabwe were an extremely successful market dominant minority, in sharp contrast to the native black majority around them. The black community voted in Mugabe, largely on his promise to seize the wealth of the whites and "redistribute" it.

Chua argues that in this set up, there are two possible alternatives - one, is that the poorer ethnic majority will elect a Mugabe-like tyrant who will seize the wealth of the minority, but in doing so drive them and their expertise out. The second is that the ethnic minority will take anti-democratic measures so as to suppress popular demands for redistribution of wealth. For example, the ethnic minority whites in Apartheid South Africa constructed a police state so as to suppress democracy there which they felt would ultimately threaten their privileged economic position.

Chua then applies this principle to the global scale. She argues that Americans are a market dominant minority, whilst the rest of the world is the poor majority. Thus, much anti-Americanism can be explained using her dynamic of rich minority vs poor majority narrative. Whilst I found this point a little stretched, it is nevertheless an interesting one.

All in all, this book is definitely one of the ten most interesting books every politics, economics and international relations student or enthusiast should read.

Read more
Report
小松　洋
短期間で送付された
Reviewed in Japan on January 18, 2013
Verified Purchase
既に入手できない本であったものが、短期間で入手できてよかった。

Read more
Report
Translate review to English
pawelgonzalez
Just grate.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 2, 2022
Verified Purchase
Just grate.

Read more
Report

See more reviews

Amazon Prime Free Trial

Return this item for free

Return this item for free

Image Unavailable

Follow the author