DRAGONTRAX CHINA VS US

A former business executive surveys the history of Chinese economic growth.

As a marketing executive with Comcast and other television broadcast providers, Taylor struggled to make inroads with the “American Chinese” customer. Recognizing the general ignorance of Western advertisers regarding Chinese consumers, the author came to understand that the Confucian value of frugality requires businesses to prioritize the value of their products. Combining her decades of experience in the business sector with subsequent research and trips to China, Taylor offers American readers a primer on understanding Chinese economic growth and its underlying ideological basis. While much of the last half century has been shaped by Chinese/U.S. coexistence (in which “America provided the innovative breakthroughs” and China dominated manufacturing “by creating and controlling the world’s largest factory floor”), the two nations are divided by their underlying ideologies, asserts the author. While the American free enterprise system prioritizes capitalism and democracy, China’s economic philosophy, per Taylor, combines state capitalism with censorship and “digitally managed authoritarianism.” Divided into three parts, the book begins with an overview of Xi Jinping, who joins Deng Xiaoping as the major architect of China’s post-Mao economic boom. Leveraging his personal backstory, Xi tapped into a national hunger for the “Chinese Dream,” promising a new era of status and economic prosperity to a growing middle class. The book’s second section takes readers through a history of China from the Qing Dynasty (whose imperial might gave way to a “Century of Humiliation” at the hands of Western colonizers) to the economic programs of Mao, Deng, and Xi. Behind the Chinese Dream, Taylor notes, is an emphasis on “saving face” as Chinese leaders harken back to a pre-colonial era of Chinese cultural, political, and regional supremacy. The book’s final section offers a multi-chapter analysis of contemporary China, surveying the intersection of economic expansion with environmental degradation, human reproductive policies, and other issues.

This is a well-researched, insightful commentary on Chinese economic history and philosophy, informed by Taylor’s business savvy and supported by more than 500 endnotes. The author balances her keen observations with an accessible writing style. The text (minus endnotes) comes in at just over 200 pages and is accompanied by a wealth of graphs, charts, and other visual aids. Equally valuable is the book’s robust appendix, which features case studies on the Chinese production of entry-level sport utility vehicles and the clashes between globalism and censorship that characterize China’s relationships with Hollywood and the National Basketball Association. A selection of essays highlights the myriad of strategies, follies, and contradictions that drive Chinese economic policies. The author should be particularly commended for her emphasis on nuances that challenge broad Western assumptions about Chinese worldviews. Taylor’s analysis of Chinese communist leaders, for example, reveals striking differences between the outlooks of Mao and his successors, who were willing to accept economic inequalities as a mainstay of the national economy (“Some will get rich first,” the communist leader Deng once proclaimed as he embraced consumerism). The author also makes a convincing argument that it is imperative for Western businesses and policymakers to understand the ideologies that drive Chinese leaders as the world enters into a fourth industrial revolution centered on technology, global trade, and information.

A nuanced yet accessible primer on the forces that shape Chinese economic policies.