The myth of Chinese capitalism The worker, the factory, and the future of the world

Dexter Roberts

Book - 2020

"The untold story of how restrictive policies are preventing China from becoming the world's largest economy Dexter Roberts lived in Beijing for two decades working as a reporter on economics, business and politics for Bloomberg. In his book, The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Roberts shows readers the reality behind today's financially-ascendant China and pulls the curtain back on how the Chinese manufacturing machine is actually powered. He focuses on two towns-the village of Binghuacun in the province of Guizhou, one of China's poorest regions, a region that sends the highest proportion of its youth away to become migrants; and Dongguan, China's most infamous factory town located in Guangdong and home to both the la...rgest number of migrant workers and the country's biggest manufacturing base. Within these two towns and the people that move between them, Roberts focuses on the story of the Mo family, former farmers now turned migrant workers who are struggling to make a living in a fast-changing country that relegates one-third of its people to second-class status via household registration, land tenure policies and inequality in education and health care systems. In The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Dexter Roberts brings to life the problems that China and its people face today as they attempt to overcome a divisive system that poses a serious challenge to the country's future development. In so doing, Roberts paints a boot-on-the-ground cautionary picture of China for a world now held in its financial thrall"--

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Subjects
Published
New York : St. Martin's Press 2020.
Language
English
Main Author
Dexter Roberts (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xxxiv, 252 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-243) and index.
ISBN
9781250089373
  • Key People in Book
  • Introduction
  • 1. The Factory
  • 2. The Family
  • 3. The Land
  • 4. The Party
  • 5. The Robots
  • 6. Going Home
  • 7. The Future
  • Epilogue
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Journalist Roberts blends economic analysis with human-interest reporting in this probing and accessible examination of the current state of the Chinese economy. Profiling migrant workers from the impoverished southwestern province of Guizhou, Roberts illustrates the hardships faced by hundreds of millions of rural Chinese who left home for factory jobs in coastal cities over the past two decades. Tight controls over the residence permit system that confers education, housing, legal, and social service benefits made these migrant workers second-class citizens in factory cities such as Dongguan, Roberts explains, though many were willing to accept "meager wages and poor working conditions" in exchange for the promise of material prosperity. The Communist Party's "bargain of continued economic growth in return for political acquiescence" is under threat, however, as large-scale shifts in labor and export markets, wrongheaded developmental policies, and President Xi Jinping's "sweeping crackdown on civil society" have pushed these workers' resentments to unstable levels. Roberts carefully documents growing unrest over unpaid wages and "arbitrary" government land seizures and writes movingly of factory workers and rural villagers struggling with the disconnect between what they were promised and what they've been able to achieve. The result is a clearheaded and persuasive counter-narrative to the notion that the Chinese economic model is set to take over the world. Readers looking for an informed and nuanced perspective on modern China will find it here. (Mar.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A gimlet-eyed look at an economic miracle that may not be so miraculous after all.China's economic transformation since the death of Mao Zedong may be impressive. However, writes Roberts, who was a Beijing-based economics and business reporter for more than 20 years, it is incomplete, and inequality reigns. One element has been the termination of the agricultural communes of old in favor of private ownership of land, but in many instances, the effect was that farmers gave up their plots in order to move to the city and its greater opportunities. The government's response, belatedly, was to impose controls on internal migration, meaning, in effect, that many Chinese were "illegal aliens" in their own country. Now that many farmers have left the city and returned to the countryside, it has "become apparent how much the cities and their urban residents had depended on them as restaurant cooks, waiters, and dishwashers, delivery people, drivers of Didi Chuxing (China's version of Uber), proprietors of small shops and hairdressers, and household cleaners and nannies." At issue is how those millions of people will make a living back home; so, too, is how money is distributed in China's evolving financial system. Most credit is extended to state-owned enterprises, Roberts writes, crowding out private entrepreneurs. Indeed, even though government policy remains a variant on the "it's a good thing to grow rich" slogans of old, self-employment is increasingly difficult, and the Chinese version of the "gig economy" seems to be rapidly failing. Deng Xiaoping's version of trickle-down economics, with residents of the coasts becoming prosperous first and then people in the distant interiors following suit afterward, has not worked, either. The author concludes by noting that while the Chinese government has been able to take credit for the comparative economic successes of the past few decades, it is also vulnerable to attack "for misrule when living standards deteriorate," to which the inevitable response will be more repression, not more economic freedom.Of much interest to students of international trade, geopolitical strategy, and global economic trends. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.