Fast Boat to China: Corporate Flight and the Consequences of Free Trade; Lessons from Shanghai
by Andrew Ross, Pantheon, April 4, 2006, 336 pages
With a view to the controversial issue of overseas outsourcing to China - especially that of white-collar jobs at US multinational manufacturing and high-tech companies, NYU professor Andrew Ross reports on China's workforce, where employees, for the first time, are beginning to show signs of a corporate mentality of job-hopping as a way of life. Among his findings, the author discovers that one result of globalisation is that Chinese workers have become as insecure as their Western counterparts. Ross also outlines China's competition with India for low-paying jobs, and how it affects the growth of white-collar jobs in Asia. His firsthand reporting is so engaging that more of it would be welcome, and his economic analysis offers a counterpoint to advocates of outsourcing. Ross makes the bold prediction that China's huge gains in technology will also affect workers and economies in East Asia and the West by allowing it to compete for top-level jobs at the same time that it absorbs lower-end jobs.
The Lenovo Affair: The Growth of China's Computer Giant and Its Takeover of IBM-PC
by Zhijun Ling, Martha Avery (Translator), John Wiley & Sons, June 23, 2006, 250 pages
Lenovo was founded in 1984 under the brand name Legend by 11 engineers working out of a small bungalow in Beijing. In 1994, Legend successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and in 2003 rebranded itself Lenovo. The company went from strength to strength, reaching 25 percent market share in the Chinese market in 2004. Its landmark acquisition of IBM's PC division in May 2005 was a key milestone for the company and a huge boost for Chinese industry. Author Ling Zhijun, a Chinese journalist, tells the enlightening story of how these men, most of them in their 40s and with no experience in business (or computers, for that matter), built China's most competitive brand name from the ground up by teaching themselves - and by example, a generation of Chinese managers - how to run a private company.
