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World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability Paperback – January 6, 2004

by Amy Chua (Author)

139 customer reviews

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The reigning consensus holds that the combination of free markets and democracy would transform the third world and sweep away the ethnic hatred and religious zealotry associated with underdevelopment. In this revelatory investigation of the true impact of globalization, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua explains why many developing countries are in fact consumed by ethnic violence after adopting free market democracy.

Chua shows how in non-Western countries around the globe, free markets have concentrated starkly disproportionate wealth in the hands of a resented ethnic minority. These “market-dominant minorities” – Chinese in Southeast Asia, Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, whites in Latin America and South Africa, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews in post-communist Russia – become objects of violent hatred. At the same time, democracy empowers the impoverished majority, unleashing ethnic demagoguery, confiscation, and sometimes genocidal revenge. She also argues that the United States has become the world’s most visible market-dominant minority, a fact that helps explain the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. Chua is a friend of globalization, but she urges us to find ways to spread its benefits and curb its most destructive aspects.

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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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product details

Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (January 6, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385721862
ISBN-13: 978-0385721868
Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 139 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #109,431 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #98 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Sustainable Development
- #192 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Political Economy
- #199 in Books > Business & Money > International > Economics

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Charles T. Richardson

Brand new concepts!

June 4, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Amy Chua tackles tough topics typically avoided at cocktail parties such as...

Why do American's love to mythologize the 'worldwide Jewish banking cartel'?

Why are 6 out of the 7 richest new Russian oligarchs Jewish?

Are Chinese students smarter than American students? Will the Chinese similarly out-compete Americans at jobs?

Why do African-American families not stand a chance competing with white families on a 'fair and level playing field' in building generational wealth?

Why did Hindii nationalists massacre between 1,000 and 2,000 Muslim civilians in Gujarat province in India in 2002? Why did the worlds' largest democracy then elevate the leader of Gujarat province to Prime Minister of India in 2014?

Chua answers all of these questions with fast-moving, clear prose.

She adds lurid storytelling, some of it personal, to flesh-out why America's greatest export - democracy - is causing us all to live in a world on fire.

Tim

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Mike

A classic endures

April 27, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Although critics of 'World On Fire' point out that there exist other reasons for inter-ethnic violence [other than rapid democratization in societies with market-dominant minorities], Professor Chua's thesis, and considerable research remains relevant and important. I am a late comer to the book, and wish I had read it years ago! She accurately predicted the results of recent rapid democratization in Egypt, which followed her logic, as an anti-Israeli demagogue (Morsi) won the popular vote. It is relevant even in ongoing conflicts such as that in Syria, where a hated minority (Alawite) holds on to power through the help of Russia and China. Her later books seem to have grown out of this one, and tried to answer the urgent voices calling for greater historical depth and breadth on this subject, which is in the headlines every day.
It's also very well written....a page burner that can do more than enchant!

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marieac

Ever wonder why new democracies fail and why "they hate us"?

March 29, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Anyone and everyone who has enough money to buy this book should read it. This is because anyone who reads and orders books online is, whether they recognize it or not, an "Ethnic Dominant Minority" and thus a key subject of this book. If you are from the U.S. you may ask "why do other countries hate us, but some still want to come live in the U.S.A.?" If you wonder why simple democracy isn't working in so many countries... just read on... it will be an eye opener.
At the end of the book there are examples of what has been done to help alleviate this problem. It is not a simple problem and the solution isn't simple. But like story of the boy throwing saving one starfish by tossing it back into the sea, every time we act to improve the lifes of those who are not in our social circle we can say, "It matters to this one."

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michael langsdorf

Provocative, Repetitive and Somewhat Hectoring

January 20, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Professor Chua's hypothesis, that the sudden introduction of free market liberalization and democracy often serve contradictory ends and have unintended consequences is thought-provoking, well researched and cogently expressed. At times however, the book seems less like a scholarly examination than a polemic (endlessly repeated) and the solutions offered are so general that they lose potency. Despite these caveats, this is book well worth reading, as it presents a context within which to consider more specific development plans and longer-term intercession efforts.

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Kathleen F. Lamantia

What the "Tiger Mother" wrote while she was raising those girls

February 3, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I read this before she published "Tiger Mother," so it is not mentioned in the this review.
I bought this on impulse, from Amazon, after I saw the author's interview with Brian Lamb on a Booknotes rerun.

She was an insightful, generous, thinking human being, who, with vast education and training, has come up with a new and striking theorem about the current state of world politics.

I was so taken with her theory that I bought the book the very next morning, via our very Western computer methodology. Sitting in my living room, in my pajamas on a Sunday morning, I simply looked it up, ordered it, paid by credit card and had it delivered to my porch 3 days later.

Her thesis, market-dominant ethnic minorities and what that means for individiual countries, in particular the US, and her cogent, well-supported documentation seem so eminently sensible to me that I wish every world leader and State Dept. employee could read this book.

She says, in essence, that exporting laissez-faire capitalism and one-person/one-vote-democracy to the Third World, with no thought for long-term consequences, is actually causing the very things the US wishes to halt - namely vicious, murderous ethnic conflict and flourishing international terrorism.

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Most recent customer reviews

SGDuval

Interesting Thrust, but Flawed

This is an interesting and provocative book. However, the assertion of causality between markets, democracy, ethnic hatred, and violence (pg 9) is flawed.Read more

Published 1 month ago

Dennis bond

pristine

excellent shape

Published 2 months ago

Gregory

they were not only hated but regularly killed en masse

A very informative book but idealistic with too little science, logic or insight. Example - Russian antisemitism is not in any way the result of few of the "oligarchs"...Read more

Published 6 months ago

David Ip

must read

first book by Harvard Law Prof. Amy Chua..read this 4 years ago, and re-pick up and quickly summarized this book: market oriented and democracy oriented cannot be the ingredients...Read more

Published 7 months ago

Very Important To Understand Our World

Well written book that really opened my eyes to some of the realities of how the world really works and why situations are the way they are.Read more

Published on September 5, 2015

S. S. Mick

World on Fire

Provocative thesis, reasonably good evidence, sobering conclusion. Good read for a book club as it produces lots of argument. However, the text is repetitive and overly labored.Read more

Published on July 10, 2015

Philippe R. Stoclet

Smart idea, boring book!

The underlying idea is certainly interesting, but how boring it gets when repeated over and over again.Read more

Published on June 14, 2015

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