The reigning consensus holds that the combination of free markets and democracy would transform the third world and sweep away the ethnic hatred and religious zealotry associated with underdevelopment. In this revelatory investigation of the true impact of globalization, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua explains why many developing countries are in fact consumed by ethnic violence after adopting free market democracy.
Chua shows how in non-Western countries around the globe, free markets have concentrated starkly disproportionate wealth in the hands of a resented ethnic minority. These “market-dominant minorities” – Chinese in Southeast Asia, Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, whites in Latin America and South Africa, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews in post-communist Russia – become objects of violent hatred. At the same time, democracy empowers the impoverished majority, unleashing ethnic demagoguery, confiscation, and sometimes genocidal revenge. She also argues that the United States has become the world’s most visible market-dominant minority, a fact that helps explain the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. Chua is a friend of globalization, but she urges us to find ways to spread its benefits and curb its most destructive aspects.
-----------
Editorial Reviews
Review
“This hard-hitting book should be read by everyone who still imagines that free markets can solve all the world’s ills. Chua’s work is provocative, creative, and important; it turns conventional wisdom on its head, and no one interested in globalization can afford to ignore it.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America
“Provocative. . . . Shocking. . . . It should make Americans think twice about exporting their political culture wholesale without a thought of who dislikes whom.”—Seattle Times
“[World on Fire] makes for compelling reading and sounds a sobering warning that should be heeded by all supporters and critics of globalization.” —Milwaukee Journal–Sentinel
“A profound book, written in plain English, and challenging the very foundations of some glib—and dangerous—assumptions behind American foreign policy. This book should be read in the highest circles of decision-making, as well as by all those who like to consider themselves ‘thinking people.’ It should provoke some re-thinking—and, for some, really thinking for the first time.”—Thomas Sowell, Hoover Institution, and author of Ethnic America, Race and Culture
“A brilliant, groundbreaking assault on the prevailing wisdom that the American political and economic model is a one-stop solution to the world’s woes.” —Elle
“Grim and thoughtful. . . . A clear-headed incisive diagnosis of the many ethnic ills of the globalizing era.” —Mother Jones
“Clear and persuasive. . . . Chua is a careful, precise writer.” —Salon
“Chua’s book is a lucid, powerfully argued, and important contribution to the debate over the forces and factors shaping the twenty-first century world.” —Strobe Talbott, President, The Brookings Institution, and author of The Age of Terror: America and the World After September 11
“A cogent analysis...convincingly reason[ed].”—The Boston Herald
“Chua offers a fundamentally new perspective on how to help sustain globalization by spreading its benefits while curbing its most destructive aspects. . . . Compelling.” —The Tampa Tribune
“Remarkably illuminating. . . . I cannot think of another work over the past couple of decades that reveals more about the disturbing persistence internationally of racial and ethnic conflicts.” —Randall Kennedy, author of Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word
“Drawing on examples from Burma to Bolivia, Chua paints a nuanced picture of ethnic and national fault lines. . . . [She] fleshes out the idea that globalization is not a magical elixir for developing nations.” —Newsweek
“A barrage of examples supports Chua’s thesis, each described with careful consideration of the different circumstances of different nations. . . . [T]old with a dramatic flair. . .” – The Weekly Standard
“The greatest tribute to any book is the conviction upon closing it that the senseless finally makes sense. That’s the feeling left by Amy Chua’s World on Fire.” —The Washington Post
Read more
From the Inside Flap
For over a decade now, the reigning consensus has held that the combination of free markets and democracy would transform the third world and sweep away the ethnic hatred and religious zealotry associated with underdevelopment. In this astute, original, and surprising investigation of the true impact of globalization, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua explains why many developing countries are in fact consumed by ethnic violence after adopting free market democracy.
Chua shows how in non-Western countries around the globe, free markets have concentrated starkly disproportionate wealth in the hands of a resented ethnic minority. These "market-dominant minorities" - Chinese in Southeast Asia, Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, whites in Latin America and South Africa, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews in post-communist Russia - become objects of violent hatred. At the same time, democracy empowers the impoverished majority, unleashing ethnic demagoguery, confiscation, and sometimes genocidal revenge. She also argues that the United States has become the world's most visible market-dominant minority, a fact that helps explain the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. Chua is a friend of globalization, but she urges us to find ways to spread its benefits and curb its most destructive aspects.
----------
4.0 out of 5 starsProvocative, Repetitive and Somewhat Hectoring
Bymichael langsdorfon January 20, 2017
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
Professor Chua's hypothesis, that the sudden introduction of free market liberalization and democracy often serve contradictory ends and have unintended consequences is thought-provoking, well researched and cogently expressed. At times however, the book seems less like a scholarly examination than a polemic (endlessly repeated) and the solutions offered are so general that they lose potency. Despite these caveats, this is book well worth reading, as it presents a context within which to consider more specific development plans and longer-term intercession efforts.
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5.0 out of 5 starsEver wonder why new democracies fail and why "they hate us"?
Bymarieacon March 29, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
Anyone and everyone who has enough money to buy this book should read it. This is because anyone who reads and orders books online is, whether they recognize it or not, an "Ethnic Dominant Minority" and thus a key subject of this book. If you are from the U.S. you may ask "why do other countries hate us, but some still want to come live in the U.S.A.?" If you wonder why simple democracy isn't working in so many countries... just read on... it will be an eye opener.
At the end of the book there are examples of what has been done to help alleviate this problem. It is not a simple problem and the solution isn't simple. But like story of the boy throwing saving one starfish by tossing it back into the sea, every time we act to improve the lifes of those who are not in our social circle we can say, "It matters to this one."
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5.0 out of 5 starsBrand new concepts!
ByCharles T. Richardsonon June 4, 2014
Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase
Amy Chua tackles tough topics typically avoided at cocktail parties such as...
Why do American's love to mythologize the 'worldwide Jewish banking cartel'?
Why are 6 out of the 7 richest new Russian oligarchs Jewish?
Are Chinese students smarter than American students? Will the Chinese similarly out-compete Americans at jobs?
Why do African-American families not stand a chance competing with white families on a 'fair and level playing field' in building generational wealth?
Why did Hindii nationalists massacre between 1,000 and 2,000 Muslim civilians in Gujarat province in India in 2002? Why did the worlds' largest democracy then elevate the leader of Gujarat province to Prime Minister of India in 2014?
Chua answers all of these questions with fast-moving, clear prose.
She adds lurid storytelling, some of it personal, to flesh-out why America's greatest export - democracy - is causing us all to live in a world on fire.
Tim
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4.0 out of 5 starsOriginal
ByNancyhuaon February 2, 2011
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This book broaches the almost taboo question of the suitability of spreading democracy and capitalism across the globe as though the combination were gospel. The problems inadvertently caused by dramatic switches to free market democracy grow more glaring as globalization increases, and this book is a good start at getting me to learn and think about how to address these issues. Aside from being original and creative, this book has the properties of being well organized, being easy to read, often trading depth for breadth, and raising many more questions than it answers.
Contents:
The first 50% of the book is a survey of various market dominant minorities within various countries, including the Chinese in Southeast Asia, the Tutsis amongst the Hutu, the whites in Latin America, the Jews in Russia, the whites in Africa, the Lebanese in west Africa. Chua sketches histories of how the minorities rose to disproportionate wealth and sometimes gives anecdotes for how members of various populations explain the phenomena to contrast the attitudes of the various ethnic groups.
Then Chua goes on to describe the backlashes against free market democracy and their most obvious beneficiaries (the market dominant minorities), the backlash ranging from nationalization or government seizure of industries or properties previously owned by market dominant minorities to discriminatory laws to genocide. Democracy allows this government-sanctioned backlash to occur because the long suffering majority is eager to vote into office candidates who promise to "reclaim the country's wealth" (from the minority and back to, supposedly, the majority), running on slogans to the tune of "Kenya for Kenyans," "Serbia for Serbs," etc. This backlash is often disastrous economically (nationalized industries often do horribly in the hands of people who are suddenly supposed to run them but don't know how), politically (corruption), and humanely (by encouraging violence). Here she posits that nationalization of industries comes from ethnonationalism rather than socialism/communism.
Although the USA is one of the main pushers of the free market democracy cocktail, Chua points out that the USA never had to endure such a prescription itself. Rather, everyone from the founding fathers onward had considered the problem of the relatively poor majority voting to "reclaim" the wealth of a minority and had put preventative measures in place, from poll taxes to literacy requirements. Furthermore Chua theorizes that, unlike Americans with the culture of the American dream, few people in developing countries believe free markets will allow them to go "from rags to riches." Thus the difference between poor Americans and poor non-Americans: unlike other poor people, poor Americans vote with the hope they will be rich one day and so tend to vote in ways that often seem counter to their own self interest. In addition the USA (along with China) is in the special state of having a market dominant majority instead of a minority, which is obviously much more stable in a democracy.
Chua ends the book with several suggestions of how these issues can be addressed and includes the example of Thailand, where Chinese were forcibly assimilated into Thai culture. She also throws in the case study of the USA as a market dominant minority at a global level, thus incurring all the consequences that come with that status, including inspiring feelings of envy, hatred, and humiliation (non-Americans hate the USA but still want to be US citizens).
The flammable combination of free market democracy and market dominant minorities begs the question of why market dominant minorities exist in the first place. It seems like there are as many explanations as there are occurrences and Chua gives many histories but I am left wondering more about this question. Her concluding suggestions for addressing the problems of inequality across ethnicities are worth reading, and in the end one wonders if the USA isn't pushing free market democracy too quickly and thoroughly, and to its own detriment, and whether a more suitable political and economic model could be found.
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4.0 out of 5 starsThe successful group then is hated for their success and bad business practices
Bywilygeiston July 13, 2014
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Amy Chua has some interesting theories on why globalization doesn't work. It is well written, but she is
slightly biased for the Chinese and Jewish culture by birth and marriage. The book doesn't give
you hope for humanity, but does point the problems of one culture coming in and dominating the business market.
The successful group then is hated for their success and bad business practices. Therefore, the inner
hatred and jealousy becomes a circle jerk of humanity fighting and revolting.
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4.0 out of 5 starsWhat the "Tiger Mother" wrote while she was raising those girls
ByKathleen F. Lamantiaon February 3, 2013
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I read this before she published "Tiger Mother," so it is not mentioned in the this review.
I bought this on impulse, from Amazon, after I saw the author's interview with Brian Lamb on a Booknotes rerun.
She was an insightful, generous, thinking human being, who, with vast education and training, has come up with a new and striking theorem about the current state of world politics.
I was so taken with her theory that I bought the book the very next morning, via our very Western computer methodology. Sitting in my living room, in my pajamas on a Sunday morning, I simply looked it up, ordered it, paid by credit card and had it delivered to my porch 3 days later.
Her thesis, market-dominant ethnic minorities and what that means for individiual countries, in particular the US, and her cogent, well-supported documentation seem so eminently sensible to me that I wish every world leader and State Dept. employee could read this book.
She says, in essence, that exporting laissez-faire capitalism and one-person/one-vote-democracy to the Third World, with no thought for long-term consequences, is actually causing the very things the US wishes to halt - namely vicious, murderous ethnic conflict and flourishing international terrorism.
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5.0 out of 5 starsA Wake-up Call to Knock the US out of Naievity and Complacency
ByFCRichelieuon May 1, 2013
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This is an extraordinary book by a Yale law professor. It is very well researched, and presented forcefully and persuasively. The author's discussion of the serious issue of the backlash in ethnic hatred and global instability is indeed a badly needed (though alas insufficient) wake-up call to knock the US out of its naivety and complacency.
The book reads like an academic dissertation. Its style is academic and legal, with old English (eg 'compleat' and 'writ large') sprinkled throughout. It is as though a lawyer is presenting her case in front of the court. As such, it is very serious reading, and not something that can be done at leisure. Ms Amy Chua has presented a most convincing case, which is backed up by very thorough research. As a retired civil servant in Hong Kong who has been involved in trade issues, I have been an advocate of free trade and free market all my professional life. After reading Ms Chua's book, I must confess my naivety.
I would say, though, that the author has been too mild in referring to the US's ideology and action as 'exporting free market democracy'. The US has, in fact, been thrusting free market democracy down the throat of everybody else. This has been done with a missionary zeal that is more foreceful, and with far wider influence, than the crusade in the old days. In the case of the crusde, the faith/ideology was Christianity; today the faith/ideology is Free Market Democracy. In the civilised world, we may hate the atrocities perpetrated by one Saddam Hussein. But that does not give the US the right to invade Iraq. Even after a long occupation of Iraq, the US could not find any 'weapons of mass destruction' that were supposed to be Iraq's sin to be punished. And it has taken a Yale law professor to point out eloquently how the free market democracy that the US foists on Iraq has not been working.
While Ms Chua has presented an excellent case of the very serious problems of naively foisting free market democracy on other countries, and indeed the world, she has been relatively brief in discussing remedies or alternatives. This is understandable, because the world has yet to find feasible alternatives. As starters, there are some interesting and helpful suggestions in the book. It will take the world a great deal more careful study, thinking through, and creative imagination to arrive at sustainable remedies.
This is Ms Amy Chua's second book that I have read, after her 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Motehr'. She has not disappointed.
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5.0 out of 5 starsA classic endures
ByMikeon April 27, 2014
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Although critics of 'World On Fire' point out that there exist other reasons for inter-ethnic violence [other than rapid democratization in societies with market-dominant minorities], Professor Chua's thesis, and considerable research remains relevant and important. I am a late comer to the book, and wish I had read it years ago! She accurately predicted the results of recent rapid democratization in Egypt, which followed her logic, as an anti-Israeli demagogue (Morsi) won the popular vote. It is relevant even in ongoing conflicts such as that in Syria, where a hated minority (Alawite) holds on to power through the help of Russia and China. Her later books seem to have grown out of this one, and tried to answer the urgent voices calling for greater historical depth and breadth on this subject, which is in the headlines every day.
It's also very well written....a page burner that can do more than enchant!
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5.0 out of 5 starsWhy is the world on fire? -- The primary answer may be . . . . .
ByDennis R. Juganon August 19, 2008
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In World on Fire, Amy Chua proposes a thesis that is well researched, reality-based, and rooted in her experiences as an extended member of a Chinese-Filipino family: The global spread of laissez-faire markets and nominal democracy has become a principal aggravating agent in group hatred and ethnic violence in some countries primarily outside the Western World where "economic-dominant minorities" concentrate enormous wealth and influence compared to the assimilated, majority population.
In the Philippines, ethnic Chinese make up less than 2% of the population yet control 60% of the country's economy, once aided by the Chinese-protective dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. She further extends this model to comprehend this consequence of globalization.
Ms. Chua writes in a clear and easy style as she cites further examples of this phenomenon. The reader is afforded a better understanding of these issues in many of the world's hotspots that are often disregarded by the world's mainstream media. A primary causal agent of genocide we often see but fail to understand may be deeply rooted in profound humiliation and poverty as a newly empowered, oppressed MAJORITY lashes back indiscriminately at a now overwhelmed economic/politically-dominant MINORITY and often their native political enablers.
The author enumerates an array of Southeast Asian countries where a Chinese minority is overwhelming an indigenous people: Myanmar (Burma), a 5% Chinese minority exploits teak, jade, and rubies; pre and post-Suharto Indonesia, a 3% Chinese minority controls nearly 70% of the country's economy; and so on.
In Africa, she cites Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) and Namibia where a minority white, South African elite extends its control over rich diamond mines: "South Africa's Oppenheimer family has controlled the richest diamond mines in the world since 1908"; the market-dominant minority Ibo of Nigeria, the Belgians giving rise to the Tutsi minority in Rwanda, and the Eritreans of Ethiopia.
In Russia, the Jewish Russian oligarchs sparked renewed anti-semitism and Russian nationalism as the oft-inebriated Boris Yeltsin encouraged the onset of "gladiator capitalism." Vladimir Putin, arguably a Russian nationalist, would later exploit these special interests to gain power, then cleverly appease the Russian people by virtually neutralizing them.
The author also identifies similar market-dominant minorities -- Indians, the Lebanese, the "pigmentocracy" of Mexico, Israel as a regional economic/politically-dominant minority in the Middle East, and the United States as a global economic/politically-dominant minority.
Many readers may have implicitly sensed the issues treated in World on Fire. Amy Chua's thesis neatly organizes and fairly explores the facts with nearly 35 pages of notes and references.
ADDED 8/17/2012: Recent events that could be appended in this book include the ongoing phenomenon of the "Arab Spring" and related events when repressed majorities have revolted to challenge entrenched totalitarian minority regimes.
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4.0 out of 5 starsNo Pulitzer Candidate, But Important Dynamic to Understand
ByA. J Smithon July 28, 2003
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
If you're at all interested in global issues, then you need to understand (or at least consider) Dr Chua's premise regarding the interplay of free markets, democracy and market dominant ethnic minorities. After reading this book, you'll view many contemporary conflicts around the world in a whole new light. Dr Chua could have gotten her point across in less than half the pages, and more objective data instead of personal anecdotal evidence would have been nice. Nonetheless, the opportunity to be exposed to this theory is worth your investment.
4.0 out of 5 starsProvocative, Repetitive and Somewhat Hectoring
Bymichael langsdorfon January 20, 2017
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
Professor Chua's hypothesis, that the sudden introduction of free market liberalization and democracy often serve contradictory ends and have unintended consequences is thought-provoking, well researched and cogently expressed. At times however, the book seems less like a scholarly examination than a polemic (endlessly repeated) and the solutions offered are so general that they lose potency. Despite these caveats, this is book well worth reading, as it presents a context within which to consider more specific development plans and longer-term intercession efforts.
5 people found this helpful
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5.0 out of 5 starsEver wonder why new democracies fail and why "they hate us"?
Bymarieacon March 29, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
Anyone and everyone who has enough money to buy this book should read it. This is because anyone who reads and orders books online is, whether they recognize it or not, an "Ethnic Dominant Minority" and thus a key subject of this book. If you are from the U.S. you may ask "why do other countries hate us, but some still want to come live in the U.S.A.?" If you wonder why simple democracy isn't working in so many countries... just read on... it will be an eye opener.
At the end of the book there are examples of what has been done to help alleviate this problem. It is not a simple problem and the solution isn't simple. But like story of the boy throwing saving one starfish by tossing it back into the sea, every time we act to improve the lifes of those who are not in our social circle we can say, "It matters to this one."
4 people found this helpful
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5.0 out of 5 starsBrand new concepts!
ByCharles T. Richardsonon June 4, 2014
Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase
Amy Chua tackles tough topics typically avoided at cocktail parties such as...
Why do American's love to mythologize the 'worldwide Jewish banking cartel'?
Why are 6 out of the 7 richest new Russian oligarchs Jewish?
Are Chinese students smarter than American students? Will the Chinese similarly out-compete Americans at jobs?
Why do African-American families not stand a chance competing with white families on a 'fair and level playing field' in building generational wealth?
Why did Hindii nationalists massacre between 1,000 and 2,000 Muslim civilians in Gujarat province in India in 2002? Why did the worlds' largest democracy then elevate the leader of Gujarat province to Prime Minister of India in 2014?
Chua answers all of these questions with fast-moving, clear prose.
She adds lurid storytelling, some of it personal, to flesh-out why America's greatest export - democracy - is causing us all to live in a world on fire.
Tim
6 people found this helpful
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4.0 out of 5 starsOriginal
ByNancyhuaon February 2, 2011
Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase
This book broaches the almost taboo question of the suitability of spreading democracy and capitalism across the globe as though the combination were gospel. The problems inadvertently caused by dramatic switches to free market democracy grow more glaring as globalization increases, and this book is a good start at getting me to learn and think about how to address these issues. Aside from being original and creative, this book has the properties of being well organized, being easy to read, often trading depth for breadth, and raising many more questions than it answers.
Contents:
The first 50% of the book is a survey of various market dominant minorities within various countries, including the Chinese in Southeast Asia, the Tutsis amongst the Hutu, the whites in Latin America, the Jews in Russia, the whites in Africa, the Lebanese in west Africa. Chua sketches histories of how the minorities rose to disproportionate wealth and sometimes gives anecdotes for how members of various populations explain the phenomena to contrast the attitudes of the various ethnic groups.
Then Chua goes on to describe the backlashes against free market democracy and their most obvious beneficiaries (the market dominant minorities), the backlash ranging from nationalization or government seizure of industries or properties previously owned by market dominant minorities to discriminatory laws to genocide. Democracy allows this government-sanctioned backlash to occur because the long suffering majority is eager to vote into office candidates who promise to "reclaim the country's wealth" (from the minority and back to, supposedly, the majority), running on slogans to the tune of "Kenya for Kenyans," "Serbia for Serbs," etc. This backlash is often disastrous economically (nationalized industries often do horribly in the hands of people who are suddenly supposed to run them but don't know how), politically (corruption), and humanely (by encouraging violence). Here she posits that nationalization of industries comes from ethnonationalism rather than socialism/communism.
Although the USA is one of the main pushers of the free market democracy cocktail, Chua points out that the USA never had to endure such a prescription itself. Rather, everyone from the founding fathers onward had considered the problem of the relatively poor majority voting to "reclaim" the wealth of a minority and had put preventative measures in place, from poll taxes to literacy requirements. Furthermore Chua theorizes that, unlike Americans with the culture of the American dream, few people in developing countries believe free markets will allow them to go "from rags to riches." Thus the difference between poor Americans and poor non-Americans: unlike other poor people, poor Americans vote with the hope they will be rich one day and so tend to vote in ways that often seem counter to their own self interest. In addition the USA (along with China) is in the special state of having a market dominant majority instead of a minority, which is obviously much more stable in a democracy.
Chua ends the book with several suggestions of how these issues can be addressed and includes the example of Thailand, where Chinese were forcibly assimilated into Thai culture. She also throws in the case study of the USA as a market dominant minority at a global level, thus incurring all the consequences that come with that status, including inspiring feelings of envy, hatred, and humiliation (non-Americans hate the USA but still want to be US citizens).
The flammable combination of free market democracy and market dominant minorities begs the question of why market dominant minorities exist in the first place. It seems like there are as many explanations as there are occurrences and Chua gives many histories but I am left wondering more about this question. Her concluding suggestions for addressing the problems of inequality across ethnicities are worth reading, and in the end one wonders if the USA isn't pushing free market democracy too quickly and thoroughly, and to its own detriment, and whether a more suitable political and economic model could be found.
4 people found this helpful
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4.0 out of 5 starsThe successful group then is hated for their success and bad business practices
Bywilygeiston July 13, 2014
Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase
Amy Chua has some interesting theories on why globalization doesn't work. It is well written, but she is
slightly biased for the Chinese and Jewish culture by birth and marriage. The book doesn't give
you hope for humanity, but does point the problems of one culture coming in and dominating the business market.
The successful group then is hated for their success and bad business practices. Therefore, the inner
hatred and jealousy becomes a circle jerk of humanity fighting and revolting.
One person found this helpful
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4.0 out of 5 starsWhat the "Tiger Mother" wrote while she was raising those girls
ByKathleen F. Lamantiaon February 3, 2013
Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase
I read this before she published "Tiger Mother," so it is not mentioned in the this review.
I bought this on impulse, from Amazon, after I saw the author's interview with Brian Lamb on a Booknotes rerun.
She was an insightful, generous, thinking human being, who, with vast education and training, has come up with a new and striking theorem about the current state of world politics.
I was so taken with her theory that I bought the book the very next morning, via our very Western computer methodology. Sitting in my living room, in my pajamas on a Sunday morning, I simply looked it up, ordered it, paid by credit card and had it delivered to my porch 3 days later.
Her thesis, market-dominant ethnic minorities and what that means for individiual countries, in particular the US, and her cogent, well-supported documentation seem so eminently sensible to me that I wish every world leader and State Dept. employee could read this book.
She says, in essence, that exporting laissez-faire capitalism and one-person/one-vote-democracy to the Third World, with no thought for long-term consequences, is actually causing the very things the US wishes to halt - namely vicious, murderous ethnic conflict and flourishing international terrorism.
6 people found this helpful
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5.0 out of 5 starsA Wake-up Call to Knock the US out of Naievity and Complacency
ByFCRichelieuon May 1, 2013
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
This is an extraordinary book by a Yale law professor. It is very well researched, and presented forcefully and persuasively. The author's discussion of the serious issue of the backlash in ethnic hatred and global instability is indeed a badly needed (though alas insufficient) wake-up call to knock the US out of its naivety and complacency.
The book reads like an academic dissertation. Its style is academic and legal, with old English (eg 'compleat' and 'writ large') sprinkled throughout. It is as though a lawyer is presenting her case in front of the court. As such, it is very serious reading, and not something that can be done at leisure. Ms Amy Chua has presented a most convincing case, which is backed up by very thorough research. As a retired civil servant in Hong Kong who has been involved in trade issues, I have been an advocate of free trade and free market all my professional life. After reading Ms Chua's book, I must confess my naivety.
I would say, though, that the author has been too mild in referring to the US's ideology and action as 'exporting free market democracy'. The US has, in fact, been thrusting free market democracy down the throat of everybody else. This has been done with a missionary zeal that is more foreceful, and with far wider influence, than the crusade in the old days. In the case of the crusde, the faith/ideology was Christianity; today the faith/ideology is Free Market Democracy. In the civilised world, we may hate the atrocities perpetrated by one Saddam Hussein. But that does not give the US the right to invade Iraq. Even after a long occupation of Iraq, the US could not find any 'weapons of mass destruction' that were supposed to be Iraq's sin to be punished. And it has taken a Yale law professor to point out eloquently how the free market democracy that the US foists on Iraq has not been working.
While Ms Chua has presented an excellent case of the very serious problems of naively foisting free market democracy on other countries, and indeed the world, she has been relatively brief in discussing remedies or alternatives. This is understandable, because the world has yet to find feasible alternatives. As starters, there are some interesting and helpful suggestions in the book. It will take the world a great deal more careful study, thinking through, and creative imagination to arrive at sustainable remedies.
This is Ms Amy Chua's second book that I have read, after her 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Motehr'. She has not disappointed.
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5.0 out of 5 starsA classic endures
ByMikeon April 27, 2014
Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase
Although critics of 'World On Fire' point out that there exist other reasons for inter-ethnic violence [other than rapid democratization in societies with market-dominant minorities], Professor Chua's thesis, and considerable research remains relevant and important. I am a late comer to the book, and wish I had read it years ago! She accurately predicted the results of recent rapid democratization in Egypt, which followed her logic, as an anti-Israeli demagogue (Morsi) won the popular vote. It is relevant even in ongoing conflicts such as that in Syria, where a hated minority (Alawite) holds on to power through the help of Russia and China. Her later books seem to have grown out of this one, and tried to answer the urgent voices calling for greater historical depth and breadth on this subject, which is in the headlines every day.
It's also very well written....a page burner that can do more than enchant!
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5.0 out of 5 starsWhy is the world on fire? -- The primary answer may be . . . . .
ByDennis R. Juganon August 19, 2008
Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase
In World on Fire, Amy Chua proposes a thesis that is well researched, reality-based, and rooted in her experiences as an extended member of a Chinese-Filipino family: The global spread of laissez-faire markets and nominal democracy has become a principal aggravating agent in group hatred and ethnic violence in some countries primarily outside the Western World where "economic-dominant minorities" concentrate enormous wealth and influence compared to the assimilated, majority population.
In the Philippines, ethnic Chinese make up less than 2% of the population yet control 60% of the country's economy, once aided by the Chinese-protective dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. She further extends this model to comprehend this consequence of globalization.
Ms. Chua writes in a clear and easy style as she cites further examples of this phenomenon. The reader is afforded a better understanding of these issues in many of the world's hotspots that are often disregarded by the world's mainstream media. A primary causal agent of genocide we often see but fail to understand may be deeply rooted in profound humiliation and poverty as a newly empowered, oppressed MAJORITY lashes back indiscriminately at a now overwhelmed economic/politically-dominant MINORITY and often their native political enablers.
The author enumerates an array of Southeast Asian countries where a Chinese minority is overwhelming an indigenous people: Myanmar (Burma), a 5% Chinese minority exploits teak, jade, and rubies; pre and post-Suharto Indonesia, a 3% Chinese minority controls nearly 70% of the country's economy; and so on.
In Africa, she cites Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) and Namibia where a minority white, South African elite extends its control over rich diamond mines: "South Africa's Oppenheimer family has controlled the richest diamond mines in the world since 1908"; the market-dominant minority Ibo of Nigeria, the Belgians giving rise to the Tutsi minority in Rwanda, and the Eritreans of Ethiopia.
In Russia, the Jewish Russian oligarchs sparked renewed anti-semitism and Russian nationalism as the oft-inebriated Boris Yeltsin encouraged the onset of "gladiator capitalism." Vladimir Putin, arguably a Russian nationalist, would later exploit these special interests to gain power, then cleverly appease the Russian people by virtually neutralizing them.
The author also identifies similar market-dominant minorities -- Indians, the Lebanese, the "pigmentocracy" of Mexico, Israel as a regional economic/politically-dominant minority in the Middle East, and the United States as a global economic/politically-dominant minority.
Many readers may have implicitly sensed the issues treated in World on Fire. Amy Chua's thesis neatly organizes and fairly explores the facts with nearly 35 pages of notes and references.
ADDED 8/17/2012: Recent events that could be appended in this book include the ongoing phenomenon of the "Arab Spring" and related events when repressed majorities have revolted to challenge entrenched totalitarian minority regimes.
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4.0 out of 5 starsNo Pulitzer Candidate, But Important Dynamic to Understand
ByA. J Smithon July 28, 2003
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
If you're at all interested in global issues, then you need to understand (or at least consider) Dr Chua's premise regarding the interplay of free markets, democracy and market dominant ethnic minorities. After reading this book, you'll view many contemporary conflicts around the world in a whole new light. Dr Chua could have gotten her point across in less than half the pages, and more objective data instead of personal anecdotal evidence would have been nice. Nonetheless, the opportunity to be exposed to this theory is worth your investment.
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