The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage | 
 enlarge | Author: Alexandra Harney
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 69320
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 1594201579
Dewey Decimal Number: 337.51
EAN: 9781594201578
ASIN: 1594201579
Publication Date: March 27, 2008
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Product Description
A landmark eyewitness expos of how China's factory economy competes for Western business by selling out its workers, its environment, and its future
In The China Price, acclaimed Financial Times correspondent Alex Harney uncovers the truth about how China is able to offer such amazingly low prices to the rest of the world. What she has discovered is a brutal, Hobbesian world in which intense pricing pressure from Western companies combines with ubiquitous corruption and a lack of transparency to exact an unseen and unconscionable toll in human misery and environmental damage.
In a way, Harney shows, what goes on in China is inevitable. In a country with almost no transparency, where graft is institutionalized and workers have little recourse to the rule of law, incentives to lie about business practices vastly outweigh incentives to tell the truth. Harney reveals that despite a decade of monitoring factories, outsiders all too often have no idea of the conditions under which goods from China are made. She exposes the widespread practice of using a dummy or model factory as a company's false window out to the world, concealing a vast number of illegal factories operating completely off the books. Some Western companies are better than others about sniffing out such deception, but too many are perfectly happy to embrace plausible deniability as long as the prices remain so low. And in the gold-rush atmosphere that's infected the country, in which everyone is clamoring to get rich at once and corruption is rampant, it's almost impossible for the Chinese government's own underfunded regulatory mechanisms to do much good at all.
But perhaps the most important revelation in The China Price is how fast change is coming, one way or another. A generation of Chinese flocked from the rural interior of the country to its coastline, where its factory work largely is, in the largest mass migration in human history. But that migration has slowed dramatically, in no small part because of widespread disenchantment with the way of life the factories offer. As pollution in China's industrial cities worsens and their infrastructure buckles, and grassroots activism for more legal recourse grows, pressures are mounting on the system that will not dissipate without profound change. Managing the violence of that change is the greatest challenge China faces in the near future, and managing its impact on the world economy is the challenge that faces us all.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 The China price and the Walmart price August 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Discussions of free trade sing its virtues, while the reality is something different: the unequal terms of that trade, especially vis a vis China and the United States, where two sets of rules are at work. One result is the 'China price' and the growing imbalance in trade relationships. The larger picture shows the other side to globalizaton: the exploitation of cheap labor, disregard of environmental law, and the generally totalitarian nature of this mutant form of capitalism. This book usefully presents the information absent from most public media discussions of the issues of free trade and is an eye-opener. However, the portrait given is of an unstable situation that can't last forever, whatever new mutation lies down the road. Residents of the United States have been caught up in an ambiguous contradiction, the destruction of domestic industry, and the addictive temptations of Walmartization. As the wheel turns from this unstable new development in global capitalism to the next combination, some awareness of the disinformation created by 'economics' discussions in the United States is needed to correct the long-term destructive character of this confused, yet to some very profitable, constellation of capitalist trickeries.
 Excellent Book On The Factory Of the World August 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The China Price does a really good job explaining what goes on in China's factories and, in particular, the whole system that has been built up in China for avoiding monitoring by Westerners. Ms. Harney's thesis is that in many cases, Western companies producing goods in China know the prices they are paying make fair employment and decent environmental standards impossible. I recommend the book to anyone interested in how China has managed to achieve the China price and what the societal and environmental costs of that price has been. I also recommend it to anyone thinking of doing any manufacturing in China, be it on your own or through outsourcing. This book will teach you what really goes on in China manufacturing.
Should be read May 8, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I just finished reading the book here in Hong Kong (of course, it's not available on the mainland.) An aspect of the reporting I really admired was the author's obvious efforts at objectivity and even handedness. I've lived in China off and on for nearly 7 years, and can say without any doubt that many or even most Chinese people are really very nice, with compassion and human feelings. On the issue of corruption, yes it's rampant in China and extends into every activity. But, the Chinese are doing pretty much what any of us would do in similar circumstances, at least I think so. It's easy for us to condemn China sometimes, but on the other hand we didn't have to exist in this reality, and it's almost impossible to place ourselves in their shoes. My biggest gripe against China--the biggest threat it represents to the world and to its own people, and something I don't feel was discussed adequately in the book, is that the government of China has created a truly FASCIST STATE, and their efforts at reinforcment are getting stronger and more desperate. The wonderful, deep Confucian influences manifested through Chinese civilization were leveraged and transformed by Mao and his successors into a twisted form of Orwellian mind control. In China today, people are free to hold any opinion they choose as long as it's the opinion they are told to have. Promotion of nationalistic fervor in China through the education system and media equals or maybe even exceeds previous efforts of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or Peronist Argentina. It's a scary place.
Good contribution to the China debate May 6, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
It's simply impossible to keep track of all the China-related books that come out these days. I mean, they're all over the place. I have a strong interest, both personally and professionally, and I try and read what I can, but quite a few of the recently released books seem to rehash the by now well-known theme of China as a manufacturing powerhouse and the correlating threat China may (or may not) pose internationally. This book, however, takes a slightly different take on things.
In "The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage" (336 pages), former Finantical Times journalist Alexandra Harney delves into the ramifications, primarily for the Chinese, of the ever-growing demand for cheaper products. Harney focuses her research primarily on Shenshen (a city that has grown from half a million to about 12 million in a matter of 2 decades) and the surrounding Guangdong province. Harney demonstrates how a lot of Chinese companies escape the "social audits" many American companies nowadays insist on simply by keeping parallel/fake records on hours worked by/wages paid to Chinese employees. Indeed, the plight of many Chinese workers is deplorable, and not helped by the weak (if that) enforcement of Chinese labor laws by the Chinese government, and the absence of a strong labor union in China. How ironic is that, China being a (so-called) Communist country. Harney spices the book with lots and lots of personal stories of Chinese individuals she interviewed for the book, and that makes it for even more interesting reading.
Harney ends her book with this great observation: "In the end, as much as the responsability seems to lie with Beijing, it also lies with the global consumer. Our appetite for the $30 DVD player and the $3 T-shirt helps keep jewelry factories filled with dust, illegal mines open and 16-year olds working past midnight." How true! And doesn't it strike you that the people who shop at, say, Wal-Mart every day are the very same people who tend to lament the fact that US manufacturing jobs are off-shored to China every day. We all make a choice, every single day.
The other side of cheap imported goods from China May 4, 2008
This is an important book, for anyone who cares, about what exactly is going on in China regarding all those off shored jobs that are adding to US companies bottom lines.
Imagine a pay scale and working conditions around the turn of the century in the US, with no EPA, OSHA, enforceable work rules and I think you get the picture of what is going on in China today. All the parties involved-- Chinese workers, manufacturers, US Importers and the like--all benefit to some differing degree at least in the short term. The workers get some income, the manufacturers get cash flow and US importers get more margin--for a while.
Then the workers come down with all types of god-awful diseases because they work in terrible conditions, the manufacturers get caught in the never ending demand of pressure to reduce costs and the importers end up--in some cases--getting more than they bargaining for (menu foods,heparin).
It's not a pretty picture. The present short term benefits to consumer and Chinese workers seem destined to change dramatically in the not too distant future--balance of payments with China creating major problems with the US and the Chinese workers will eventually get tired not getting their share of the wealth.
The book zeros in on what's going on; I'd have appreciated a bit more forecasting on where this might end up.
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