Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage
    The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage
    The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage
    Audiobook10 hours

    The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage

    Written by Alexandra Harney

    Narrated by Karen White

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    To write The China Price, Alexandra Harney has penetrated further and deeper into China's enormous ecosystem of export-oriented industry than any outsider before her to uncover 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. The recent scandals about Chinese-made toys, tires, and toothpaste drive home a central tenet of this book: What happens in Chinese factories affects all of us, everywhere.

    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 has infected the country, in which everyone is clamoring to get rich and corruption is rampant, it's almost impossible for the Chinese government's own underfunded regulatory mechanisms to do much good at all.

    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 the factory jobs are 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 as 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateApr 15, 2008
    ISBN9781400176090
    The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage

    Related to The China Price

    Related audiobooks

    Business For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Shawn Brimley's Town

      Jan 11, 2018

      Shawn Brimley's Town
      3 min read

    • Article

      Jonah Goldberg: Pandemic Is A Blown Opportunity For Conservative Nationalists

      May 20, 2020

      Future historians of the American right are going to have a devil of a time figuring out what the hell happened as the second decade of the 21st century came to a close. But every day I become more convinced about at least one of their conclusions: T

      3 min read

    • Article

      What A Picture Of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez In A Bikini Tells Us About The Disturbing Future Of AI | Arwa Mahdawi

      Feb 3, 2021

      Want to see a half-naked woman? Well, you’re in luck! The internet is full of pictures of scantily clad women. There are so many of these pictures online, in fact, that artificial intelligence (AI) now seems to assume that women just don’t like weari

      1 min read

    • Article

      From 'Horseless Carriage' To 'Driverless Car,' Are You Ready?

      Jul 25, 2018

      Shortly after the first automobile arrived in the small but grandly named village of Ohio City, Ohio, an old story goes, someone brought a second car to town -- which soon collided with the first. This story, which I learned growing up in another Ohi

      3 min read

    • Article

      Chaos Under Heaven: Trump As Raging Bull In A China Policy Shop

      Mar 14, 2021

      Covid-19 has left more than 530,000 Americans dead and China’s standing with the US at a historic low. Only Iran and North Korea fare worse. US opinion is no outlier. China’s reputation has taken a beating in Australia, the UK, Sweden, the Netherland

      3 min read

    • Article

      Super Centenarians

      Aug 12, 2021

      In May, the world’s oldest man, Bob Weighton from Alton in Hampshire, died in his sleep at the age of 112. He had briefly held the record after the death in February of Chitetsu Watanabe from Niigata, Japan, who was also 112. Weighton was born in Hul

      2 min read

    • Article

      Poisoner in Chief

      Jan 21, 2020

      Poisoner in Chief
      19 min read

    • Article

      The Year In Misinformation

      Jan 8, 2021

      The Year In Misinformation
      4 min read

    • Article

      Strange Continent

      Aug 12, 2021

      Sometimes, adventures are right on your doorstep – as in the story of the modern Robinson Crusoe who lived on a deserted Italian island. In 1989, Mauro Morandi set sail from Italy in a catamaran to live in the Pacific Ocean, but his journey brought h

      6 min read

    • Article

      Astroworld Concertgoers

      Nov 13, 2021

      Astroworld Concertgoers
      2 min read

    • Article

      A Shorthistory Of Fortean Boardgames

      Dec 2, 2021

      It’s sometimes said that playing with supernatural forces “is not a game”. Yet in millions of homes around the world, family game night has mixed laughs and friendly competition with a delve into the weird and unexplained. Whether it’s contacting dea

      22 min read

    • Article

      The Other July 4

      Jul 4, 2021

      The Other July 4
      7 min read

    • Article

      Worldwide Leadership Has Been Severely Lacking Over Covid-19 – We Need A Better Way

      May 26, 2021

      There are many lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic. One of the most important is that when warnings and proposals about reforms on big global issues are not heeded, the world is asking for trouble. In the case of pandemic preparedness and response, 1

      4 min read

    • Article

      Larry Diamond

      Jun 24, 2019

      The Stanford scholar known as Mr. Democracy on the shrinking free world, the U.S.’s irreplaceable role in it and his book Ill Winds

      2 min read

    • Article

      Elephant Odyssey

      Aug 12, 2021

      Elephant Odyssey
      2 min read

    • Article

      Capitalism’s Favorite Drug

      Mar 15, 2020

      Capitalism’s Favorite Drug
      8 min read

    • Article

      Klaus Schwab

      Jan 14, 2017

      Klaus Schwab
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The China Price

    4.5/5

    3 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Book about the cost of doing business in China.
    • 5/5
      A must read for all who are concerned with global worker righrts and the true cost of cheap consumer goods.
    • 5/5
      Not the book for people who want to remain ignorant and believe what they buy doesn’t matter. Especially starting with chapter 7, Harney lays out the crux of the China Price: social accountability and cost reduction are conflicting demands that American brands are almost universally (simultaneously) demanding. The book contains real insight as the author proves adept at understanding both businesses and people (a rare gem) and provides ample stories and evidences throughout the book.