China Inc. by Ted Fishman

Does reading a predict-the-future book ten years after its publication and then feeling superior to the author when his predictions failed to come true make me an asshole? Yes. Yes it does. Is this book still shitty? Yes. Yes it is.

HELP I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY THERE'S A TINY STAR BETWEEN "CHINA" AND "INC." WHY DID TED C. FISHMAN DO THAT

China Inc. was billed as author Ted Fishman’s doomsday description of the so called imminent global takeover that was to be the Chinese economy. Funny story about this book, I found it in a Good Will store for 50 cents. The title caught my eye along with the “”very clever”” front cover that depicts an American flag lapel pin in a baggie stamped with the classic words “Made In China”. Do you get it?? It’s like the American flag… but it was made in China. It’s like, a metaphor. A metaphor for America being made in China and also maybe that America is trapped inside a little plastic baggie. Maybe China is the baggie. Maybe we’re the baggie. There’s so many layers to deduce from this. Oh Ted Fishman, you confounding little bitch.

Anyways, I crack the book open and I notice that funny enough, it was published in 2005. Now, moment of truth time here, I actually bought and read this book back in 2015, so it was a little amusing that a full decade now separated the book and everything it tried to predict. Not only that, but the book specifically claims to predict the global future ten years from its publishing. Little did I know that I was holding a tome in my hands that would detail the fate of the earth ten years in the future- which was now the present day (but is now also the past because you have to remember that ten years from 2005 was three years ago- god damn it Ted Fishman, now you're making the time space continuum hard to understand).

As you may be able to guess based on what I've written so far, Ted Fishman failed to accurately predict much of anything. This isn't to say that the book is entirely worthless or anything; on the contrary, it's actually rather interesting where it concerns objective information. China Inc. reads in two ways: One way is the recounting of China's history, its population and urban growth and the state of its industry. The other way is Ted Fishman getting high by huffing his own carbon emissions with a paper bag and then writing a bunch of profoundly exaggerated bullshit.

Hmm. Objective and interesting facts that are intermingled with sensationalized bullshit for the purpose of trying to spin a shocking (money generating) story?? I- I'm suddenly having flashbacks. Flashbacks of... of Fire and... and Fury... Gee, wonder what that could mean? Whatever, forget all that for now, let's keep talking about China Inc.

Okay so anyways, China Inc. talks a lot of bullshit that is amusing to reflect back on, as the predictions all ended up being pretty overreaching once compared to what actually ended up happening. Yet, still, it managed to be an interesting history study in the growth of China's industry. Part of me wishes Ted Fishman weren't such a puckery butthole so that we could have gotten a more unbiased and un-sensationalized history of Chinese industry. A much bigger part of me, however, thinks it's way too amusing to shittalk random authors on a blog so in the end I'm not really left with much cause for regret.

I found the factual parts of the book fascinating. Basically, China blew up into the industrial powerhouse it became because, first of all (if you didn't know), there are a lot of fucking people who live in China. However, China was also industrially underdeveloped for many decades in the modern world. This meant the large bulk of the country's people were, up until only very recently in the grand scheme of things, living in rural countrysides and not in cities. Once China adopted Communism, however, the government began building its cities and making life tougher for the millionbilliontrillionseriouslytheressomanyfuckingchinesewheredidtheyallcomefromzillion Chinese rural farmers. Thus, what is probably the largest human migration in history began to take place as rural Chinese folk moved en masse into the budding cities.

Chinese factories discovered two things. First, they had a metric assload of fresh country rubes moving into town who needed jobs. Second, these rubes would work for fucking nothing and would do work so menial and stupid that it's basically an insult to human intelligence and capability. For instance, one section of the book describes Fishman and his interviews with American business owners. An owner of a company that specialized in leather products told how the Chinese were able to out compete the American leather industry so hard. In China, there were entire factories where all the workers did was sit around and glue tiny scraps of trash leather into full straps of refurbished leather. By hand.

Chinese workers have it pretty rough. They're all expendable as hell and up until only a few years ago the tide of endless rural migrants wasn't stopping. This left most of the Chinese labor force with a choice: do shitty factory work in sweatshops or fucking starve to death and die lolz. If you're wondering why the Chinese would put up with such poor working conditions and do such tedious labor, it is because they do not want to fucking starve to death and die.

So basically Chinese industry got to big because the country had a purely exploitable work force. Most Chinese people living in cities were moving from the country sides, they had no established family or life in the city. Which meant they had no connections. Which meant they had no social network. Which means they got a job gluing tiny pieces of leather into big pieces of leather.

So anyways, the book is quite interesting when recounting objective facts and history. What makes this book such a god damned slog to read, however, is the rough sensationalized bits stuffed between the gooey facts. Parts of the book are even outright contradictory, like Fishman has some kind of crazy, confused love-hate relationship with China or something. As an example, Fishman outright states that a country can not be a proper superpower or have a superpower economy if it doesn't adhere to basic human rights, but then goes on to explain how China will become a global superpower despite the fact his prediction calls for China to only get worse at human rights. Fishman never explains this logic, either. He just kind of explains how China can't be a superpower in a book that claims China will overtake the USA as a superpower.

Oh wait, Fishman doesn't have a love-hate relationship with China! His book is just shitty and stupid! Silly me. The book was thoroughly criticized for its mixed messages when it first came out, as well as for its use of sensationalized bending of the truth. I'm not breaking new ground by calling Fishman out on his crap or anything, but the book is just so poorly written at parts that it's actually kind of shocking. Like Fishman doesn't want to admit that China is pretty good at taking over the global industry but also wants to scare everyone into thinking China is pretty good at taking over the global industry. Like Fishman has a big framed portrait of Chairman Mao in his den and whenever he has company over he likes to talk trash about China and laugh at his Mao portrait but then awkwardly stammers when his guests ask him what all those white splotchy stains are that cover Mao's lush, kissable lips.

What China Inc. truly lacks is a sense of being informative. Yeah okay, it can recite a history lesson and describe the modernization of Chinese cities and tell us all about how Chinese men love Viagra and it can promise us how it's going to tell us all about how China is going to overtake the world economy (no for realsies, guys, just a couple more chapters, China Inc. swears it'll get to it!) but does it ever succeed at giving us unbiased, factual information? No. No it does not. It does, however, contain a vast mess of run-on sentences; as well as a score of scattered thoughts that bounce between interesting (if sort of useless for the book's primary message) factoids and unfounded doomsday theories.

Basically, here's the scope of things. Chinese industry and American consumerism are immortally linked together. China gives us tons of cheap products made from cheap labor and we give China good deals on trade. China takes jobs from Americans, we complain for a little bit and then we all buy the newest iPhone and a bunch of cheap bullshit from Wal-Mart and forget about it until the next time a Republican runs for political office. Throw in a quick story about gluing leather pieces together and I just rewrote Ted Fishman's shitty book in less than 100 words. Good night, folks.

OH FUCK I JUST REALIZED THIS BOOK REMINDS ME OF FIRE AND FURY LOL

Pointless numerical score:

4/10

"China" isn't the only thing that starts with the letter 'C', Fishman. You stupid cunt.