Asssignment: Book Report 2 "Elephant and the Dragon"

I’ve recently read the Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What it Means for All of Us by Robyn Meredith. While it was a fast and easy read, I think that it would be better taught to students on a high school level, as it would hold the most power to influence people who view these countries as mysterious, far off entities and are struggling to come to terms with the importance of these nations in the modern world. I do not consider myself to be an expert on either china or India (not even close) yet I was somewhat disappointed with the limited depth and breadth that Meredith achieved in her analysis.

Meredith begins her account detailing the rise to power of the modern governments of the world’s two most populous nations with a cursory, if somewhat slanted, historical briefing about the two countries. While it would be impossible to give a truly accurate historical accounting of the Communist revolution, the turbulent Mao years, Zhou Enlai’s revolutionary charisma, and Deng Xiaoping’s subsequent economic genius; then move on to explain all of post-colonial India, the Gandhi clan, and Nehru’s struggles for reform (All in one book you say?) in even ten volumes, Meredith does indeed try to do it in just a few pages.

She at first says Mao “wasted no time transforming a nation into his version of an egalitarian communist utopia”, citing collectivization of farming which began in 1955. She completely leaves out the years before Mao’s reforms from 1949-1955 in which moderate land reform and mixed public and private enterprise actually made the country much more stable and profitable than previous KMT regime for a short period of time. A Chinese professor of mine once explained that had Mao died after five years he would have been great, after 10 mediocre, however he died after more than 25 years in power and had plenty of time to become insulated and unaware of both the damage of his policies and the extent of his neuroses. Moving to the end of Mao’s reign she glosses over the complex series of event and figures that shaped and enable’s Deng Xiaoping’s eventual rise to power and the variety of reasons for which he viewed practicality as China’s new dogma, instead suggesting that he was merely waiting in the wings for his time to strike. This is primarily a “business, economics, and policy” category of text so I won’t be too picky about how I judge it; but let’s just say that Meredith is no history professor.

Detailing the rise of power in India and China, Meredith pays little attention to the fact that until about 200 years ago (around the time the industrial revolution finally got rolling) these two countries were responsible for the vast majority of economic output in the world. China and India led the world in exports (silk, spices, house-wares, ect), goods that had long been coveted by Europeans as being vastly superior to anything that they could produce domestically. Viewed in this respect, the current development of these two countries is not so much a “surpassing of the West”, but a return to prominence after a century or two of stagnation, brought about mainly by the need to “modernize”. I believe that this is very much how the residents and leaders of these nations would like to view the situation as well. This is just a small example of the pervasive ethnocentrism that is evidenced even in the book’s title, after all who is exactly is she refering to as “all of us”?

Meredith does at end give readers some good advice, she calls on Americans to create less debt and save more money, as do the Chinese. This is more than just a little bit portentous considering the massive economic collapse that we are currently suffering. Of course our government and current economic theory tell us that we have to spend more to get out of the crisis, hence the lowering of interest rates, government spending, incentives packages to buy yet more garbage…. “Produce! Consume!“ ect, ect. Spend your way out of debt? Does that really sound right to a logical mind? Is that what your grandmother would tell you to do?

Meredith’s advice and analysis, while accurate and sound in some respects (the need for greater education in America for instance), fail to present any really groundbreaking ideas or perspectives to help America deal with the looming power of China and India. For instance she whines about losing jobs to off-shoring; this is hardly a new complaint and has been addressed countless times by media pundits and protectionists of all types. Ironic, as previous chapters discussed how it was protectionism that held both India and China back before their respective economic reforms. She does not however, actively engage in calling for protectionist measure to be enacted to solve the problem, arguing instead that we should become better educated, build more infrastructure and somehow shift the entirety of our governmental and business practices (sure.. in a country where it takes 11 years and five lawsuits to build a bridge – The SF bay bridge reconstruction, begun in 2002 was supposed to be done in 2007… now its supposed to be 2013… we shall see. Let’s not even begin to talk about the budgeting mess on this project. Compare this to China which can effectively re-build an entire city in four years for the Olympics while bridges of this caliber, such as in Hong Kong, go up practically overnight.)

It will take America more than the economic rise and development of India and China to motivate them into changing anything. As we have learned in our IHRM class recently (best class I’ve taken in grad school so far) unless people can see a clear and visible need for change, no change will occur. In the United States people still are not convinced that change is necessary. Even given the current economic collapse, there is still a majority in the government and business communities (most from an aging, greedy, and decrepit post-war generation that really doesn’t know any better) who believe our way is the best way, and want to continue our government and business practices in the same manner that they have “always” been done. It may be that the self-imposed ideological isolation of the Cold War is still taking its toll on the minds of our leaders. Until the rise of China and India hit these people where it hurts nothing will be done. Of course by then it will be a little too late (probably already is) as the growing momentum of the “Elephant and Dragon” will carry India and China far above and beyond the failing inertia of the decaying western world.