textsMaonomics : why Chinese communists make better capitalists than we do
by Napoleoni, Loretta;Twilley, Stephen
Publication date 2011
Topics Globalization -- Economic aspects -- China, Globalization -- Economic aspects -- China, Economic history, Globalization -- Economic aspects, International economic relations, China -- Economic conditions -- 2000-, China -- Economic conditions -- 1976-2000 -- Congresses, China -- Foreign economic relations, China -- Economic conditions -- 1976-2000, China -- Economic conditions -- 2000-, China -- Foreign economic relations, China
Publisher New York, NY : Seven Stories
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"An expert on world finance takes the long view that the Chinese economic miracle will influence how the rest of the world does business, and signals the coming collapse of capitalism as we know it."--Publisher description
Exploitation factories: Charles Dickens in Shenzhen -- The race to the bottom -- Chinese nouvelle cuisine: Marxism in a neoliberal sauce -- Beyond the Great Wall -- The neoliberal dream of modernization -- The world is flat -- Financial neoliberalism as predator -- In union there is strength -- From Muhammad to Confucius -- The Great Wall of renewable energy -- Looking at Washington and Beijing through Chinese eyes -- Late imperial spin: Osama Bin Laden as the modern Attila -- Saboteurs of the nation-state -- Supply-side economics -- The full monty -- Mediacracy -- The thousand Evitas of Berlusconi -- Scenes from a marriage -- The last frontier -- Globalization and crime -- Rousseau in Chinese characters
Includes bibliographical references and index
"An expert on world finance takes the long view that the Chinese economic miracle will influence how the rest of the world does business, and signals the coming collapse of capitalism as we know it."--Publisher description
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Maonomics: Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists Than We Do Hardcover – 15 September 2011
by Loretta Napoleoni (Author)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 11 ratings
The end of the cold war was thought to signal the triumph of Western capitalism over Communism. In Maonomics- Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists than We Do, Napoleoni argues just the opposite- what we are witnessing instead is the beginning of the collapse of capitalism and the victory of "communism with a profit motive." Maonomics charts the prodigious ascent of the Chinese economic miracle and the parallel course of the West's ongoing insistence on misconstruing China and its economy even as we acknowledge its growing influence and importance. Maonomics is a warning call whereby Western governments can avoid economic collapse by learning how to understand more clearly what the lessons of the Chinese economy really are. Based on first-hand reporting from China during frequent visits in the last several years, Maonomics lends credence to the Chinese view and translates it for Western readers. For example, the Chinese too are attached to their vision of democracy, but it is different from ours. It isn't focused as much on voting as it is economic opportunity and the fair distribution of wealth and prosperity. Napoleoni also separates failed Leninist political ideology from true Marxist theory, showing that Marx's writings do not reject profit so long as it is used to benefit the people. Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat is being realized in China, she argues, where giant steps forward are being made in the name of progress and the wellbeing and prosperity of the Chinese people. Looking at the Chinese economy up close, any economist would be hard pressed to say that they are not on the right track. Here Loretta Napoleoni offers a front row seat on the greatest show on earth- the peaceful economic revolution that is shifting the balance of power in the world from West to East.
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Review
"Timely and fascinating, Napoleoni's top-notch reporting, in which her attention turns from Viagra to blood diamonds to the banana price wars in a few pages, works in the vein of Freakonomics and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, but much grimmer." -Publishers Weekly on Napoleoni's Rogue Economics, a PW Book of the Year 2008
"This thoughtful and incisive inquiry yields much insight into some of the most important issues of today, and tomorrow" -Noam Chomsky on Napoleoni's Terror Incorporated
"... In urging the West to abandon its prejudices and fundamentally rethink its ideology, [Loretta Napoleoni] is asking the right questions." -Morning Star
"With her hands on China's skull, Napoleoni can map the phrenology of a billion and a half Chinese minds as they struggle with the complex contradictions of this new and still-churning mix of capitalism and communism. . . . If you want to understand the force that will direct your children and your children's children, read this book. Twice." -Greg Palast
About the Author
A woman of the Left who garners praise from Noam Chomsky and Greg Palast at the same time as she is quoted respectfully in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, LORETTA NAPOLEONI was born in 1955 in Rome. In the mid 1970s she became an active member of the feminist movement in Italy, and later studied as a Fulbright Scholar at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. She began her career as an economist, and went on to work as London correspondent and columnist for La Stampa, La Repubblica and La Paîs. Napoleoni is the author of the international bestsellers Rogue Economics: Capitalism's New Reality and Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Money Behind Global Terrorism. She has served as the Chairman of the countering terrorism financing group for the Club de Madrid, and lectures regularly around the world on economics, money laundering and terrorism. Napoleoni lives in London and Montana.
Product details
Publisher : SEVEN STORIES PRESS; 1st edition (15 September 2011)
Language : English
Hardcover : 384 pages
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From other countries
Evandro Afonso do Nascimento
5.0 out of 5 stars Very good
Reviewed in Brazil on 21 July 2015
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This book is a true treatise on China. It is mandatory for every citizen who wants to understand the international situation.
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Craig Carter
5.0 out of 5 stars Maonomics: Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists Than We Do
Reviewed in the United States on 7 September 2012
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A really fabulous read from an economist who doesn't have the blinkers of the US to misguide her thoughts, like her other books immensely readable and sensible.
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Amazon Customer
2.0 out of 5 stars Journalistic Book
Reviewed in Brazil on 18 April 2015
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The book promises more than it delivers. We await an analysis of China and its economy and read about Thatcher, Reagan, Islamic Economy, Berlusconi's "Evitas", etc. but very little Marxist analysis of value, abstract work, surplus value and PROFIT in Chinese society . Two stars is a good size for the author's assessment of Deng X. Ping.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars good price
Reviewed in the United States on 4 June 2017
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great product, delivery quickly, price is good.
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Mercator
2.0 out of 5 stars Up with China, down with the West
Reviewed in the United States on 24 November 2011
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Ms. Napo is part of a generation of educated Italians who grew up admiring the PCI, whose Marxist ideology held the key to a bright future for all. The collapse of the soviet union was a shock and left millions of believers in italy puzzled and looking for explanations. Napo has a simple one: communism is very successful, but in its Chinese version, which is completely different from the mistaken Soviet interpretation, and it is rapidly modernizing China, which will soon overtake the evil West. At this point most people will say: you've got to be kidding! China's ideology has undergone tremendous change, it can hardly be described today as Mao-nomics or even Deng-nomics; leaders as well as ordinary Chinese hardly ever refer to marxist concepts nowadays. Napo understands that, but it does not stop her; writing in a breezy, fast moving style (well translated from the Italian by S. Twilley) she makes her case boldly and then moves forward as in a James Bond movie, where the quick changes in the plot entertain the reader and hide the preposterousness of the underlying premises. A former newspaperwoman with no scholarly pretensions, she has read widely about China and world affairs generally, and she ransacks her reading list for interesting anecdotes to fit to her ideological frame: up with China, down with the West.
A quick summary. Iceland, guided by a neoliberal ideology sank into disaster, while China's economy following the opposite principles (really?) soared to new heights. Reagan and Thatcher badly damaged their economies, while Deng sent China on an upward path by forcing millions of people to work hard for very low wages (hey, to make an omlet you have to break some eggs). Marx would have been in favor of globalization, seeing it as a way to raise the conditions of the working class (the Chinese working class, at any rate). Napo highlights many shortcomings in China, such as hideous factory conditions, pollution, lack of rights. While not condoning these, she sees them as inevitable in a rapidly developing country and having some parallels with the early stages of the West's industrial revolution. For Napo, Deng's repression of TienAnMen was well justified: if Chinese had been granted full democratic freedoms in 1989 hundreds of millions of them would have flooded to the West bringing chaos in their wake (in this imaginative Western centric perspective, she takes for granted that they would have been admitted by western countries). In any case mistakes by Chinese leaders made in the name of the people are excusable, when western leaders are corrupt and care only about themselves. Western leaders bail out banks with taxpayer money, while China where necessary recapitalizes state banks that have non-performing loans so they can keep lending (see the difference?).
We also learn: p.67 Chinese ships under admiral Cheng He discovered America in 1421 (!), p.108 JP Morgan used TARP funds to acquire Bear Stearns in the Spring of 2008 (wasn't TARP approved in the Fall of 2008?). p.127 The Fed followed an aggressive disinflation policy which resulted in the financial crisis (weren't Fed rates held very low from 2000 to 2005?), p.204 oil was the fuel that made the Industrial Revolution possible (I thought it was coal?), p. 284 in China's DNA the business gene has replaced the colonization gene (whatever that means). But the emphasis is on the big picture, not the specifics.
I found the book entertaining, but ultimately superficial. What is the point? Nowhere does she suggest specific policies that would improve the situation, she just revels in the good guys' successes (China) and in the bad guys' comeuppance (the neoliberal west), even winking at AlQaida for its daring. There are far better books on the financial crisis (Rajan, Nocera, etc.), on chinese policies and China's opening (Kissinger's is the latest), on China's role in Africa (such as Brautigam), on what the US can learn from its competition with China (Ann Lee) and the many other subjects briefly touched in this book.
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Cristina De Perfetti
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on 7 March 2015
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Excellent, brilliant a very deep and unconventional insight in world politics and economic
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Wyatt
3.0 out of 5 stars Only an unquestioning believer could write this
Reviewed in the United States on 16 June 2014
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Ms Napoleoni has some interesting thoughts (hence three stars) - I was hoping from a friend's recommendation that Maonomics would convincingly explain why China appears so dynamic and the West (Europe more than the US actually) seems so moribund but it didn't work. All too often she makes the facts fit the predetermined story rather than the other way around, and where it suits her case she either uses or overlooks the inconvenient facts as the need indicates (hence only three stars).
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