Playing Our Game: Why China's Rise Doesn't Threaten the West
Conventional wisdom holds that China's burgeoning economic power has reduced
the United States to little more than a customer of Beijing. Not so, writes Edward
Steinfeld. In this fascinating book, Steinfeld asserts that China's growth actually
enhances Western commercial supremacy.
By seeking to realize its dream of modernization by integrating itself into the Western
economic order, China is playing by our rules, reinforcing the dominance of our companies
and regulatory institutions. Indeed, China has in many ways handed over--outsourced--the
remaking of its domestic economy and domestic institutions to foreign companies and
foreign rule-making authorities. And even as Chinese companies assemble products for
export to the West, the most valuable components for those products come from the West.
America's share of global manufacturing, by value, has actually increased since 1990.
Within China, the R&D centers established by Western companies attract the country's
best scientists and engineers, and harness that talent to global, rather than indigenous
Chinese, innovation efforts. In short, China's economic emergence is good for America.
Edward S. Steinfeld is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and Director of the MIT-China Program. He is the author of
Forging Reform in China: The Fate of State-Owned Industry.
Table of Contents
Part One: The New Competitor--What Globalization Really Means for China
1. China's Rising Technology Giants
2. The Real Meaning of "Made in China"
3. Fee-for-Service Socialism and the "Walmartization" of China
Part Two: Outsourcing "Chinese Style"
4. Institutional Outsourcing
5. Institutional Outsourcing on the Financial Front
6. IPOs and the Outsourcing of Control over "National Champions"
Part Three: Stretching the Bounds of Sustainability
7. China's Energy Sector - Who is Really Calling the Shots?
8. Going Global on the Energy Front
9. Coping with Climate Change: Build It and They Will Come Part
Part Four: Conclusions
10. Playing Our Game Now and for the Future
280 pages, Paperback