Rivals or Big Squeeze

Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade

Author: Bill Emmott

The former editor in chief of the Economist returns to the territory of his bestselling book The Sun Also Sets to lay out an entirely fresh analysis of the growing rivalry between China, India, and Japan and what it will mean for America, the global economy, and the twenty-first-century world.

Though books such as The World Is Flat and China Shakes the World consider them only as individual actors, Emmott argues that these three political and economic giants are closely intertwined by their fierce competition for influence, markets, resources, and strategic advantage. Rivals explains and explores the ways in which this sometimes bitter rivalry will play out over the next decade—in business, global politics, military competition, and the environment—and reveals the efforts of the United States to manipulate and benefit from this rivalry. Identifying the biggest risks born of these struggles, Rivals also outlines the ways these risks can and should be managed by all of us.

Publishers Weekly

Over the past 20 years, some of the most striking economic growth in history has been taking place in Asia, and former Economisteditor-in-chief Emmott (The Sun Also Sets) combines solid economic and political analysis with entertaining personal accounts to discuss three countries in the center of the phenomenon. Emmott paints richly detailed portraits of China, India and Japan, examining the global implications of their growing rivalry while remaining attentive to issues that extend beyond the region, such as the environment and nuclear weapons proliferation. Several of his conclusions are familiar: China's rapid economic growth is coming into conflict with its political authoritarianism; there is vast potential for India's growth if public policy can properly encourage it; Japan's aging and shrinking population could lead the country into further economic decline. The true strength of the book lies in Emmott's ability to guide the reader through the intricate-often fraught-relationships between these countries without losing focus. Particularly welcome is his ability to discuss potential trouble spots in the region without degenerating into alarmism. This serious and stimulating book will be indispensable to anyone interested in where these countries are headed-and where they might take us. (May)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Reviews

The East, to steal a line from Mao, is red: red-hot, that is, economically, and on the way to reshaping the global economy. Former Economist editor-in-chief Emmott (20:21 Vision: Twentieth-Century Lessons for the Twenty-First Century, 2003, etc.) credits George W. Bush with doing one thing-one thing-right in his years in the White House: forging close ties with India, or at least attempting to do so. Though far behind many other Asian economies, by Emmott's account, India has the wherewithal and the population to rival China and neutralize its power in the coming years. "George Bush's recognition of that fact," Emmott writes, "was his Richard Nixon moment"-that is, a climactic moment akin to Nixon's rapprochement with China precisely to balance Soviet power worldwide. The playing fields are different, of course, now that China has extended itself into the global economy and the local economies of most of the world's nations; yet, Emmott hazards, China's economic growth will likely plateau in about 15 years to a comparatively modest but still healthy five percent per annum, whereas India's will keep on growing at ten percent thereafter. It is no small matter that both countries may "treble their economic output" by 2025, and, as Emmott writes, "Asia is going to carry on getting richer and stronger, probably for a long time to come." Japan fits in the scheme less centrally, but Emmott envisions a sort of free-trade zone among Japan, Korea and China, a scenario that becomes happier and more probable under the assumption that Korea unifies and that Chinese communism becomes even less communistic. Japan remains nervous, of course, about its longtime Chinese foe, one reason for "Japan'sanxiousness to involve India in regional affairs." Emmott closes with a series of policy recommendations, including that the U.S. government declare "that it sees Asian integration and intraregional cooperation as desirable."Brightly written, in Economist tradition, and of much interest to fiscal wonks, geopoliticians and investors.

Table of Contents:

Asia's New Power Game     1
A Continent Created     28
China: Middle Country, Central Issue     54
Japan: Powerful, Vulnerable, Aging     96
India: Multitudes, Muddle, Momentum     135
A Planet Pressured     175
Blood, Memory and Land     208
Flash Points and Danger Zones     239
Asian Drama     280
Acknowledgments     312
Endnotes     317
Bibliography     325
Index     328

Interesting textbook: Encountering Development or Essentials of Public Health

Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker

Author: Steven Greenhous

The Big Squeeze takes a fresh, probing, and often shocking look at the stresses and strains faced by tens of millions of American workers as wages have stagnated, health and pension benefits have grown stingier, and job security has shriveled.

Going behind the scenes, Steven Greenhouse tells the stories of software engineers in Seattle, hotel housekeepers in Chicago, call center workers in New York, and janitors in Houston, as he explores why, in the world’s most affluent nation, so many corporations are intent on squeezing their workers dry. We meet all kinds of workers: white collar and blue collar, high tech and low tech, middle income and low income; employees who stock shelves during a hurricane while locked inside their store, get fired after suffering debilitating injuries on the job, face egregious sexual harassment, and get laid off when their companies move high-tech operations abroad. We also meet young workers having a hard time starting out and seventy-year-old workers with too little money saved up to retire.

The book explains how economic, business, political, and social trends—among them globalization, the influx of immigrants, and the Wal-Mart effect—have fueled the squeeze. We see how the social contract between employers and employees, guaranteeing steady work and good pensions, has eroded over the last three decades, damaged by massive layoffs of factory and office workers and Wall Street’s demands for ever-higher profits. In short, the post–World War II social contract that helped build the world’s largest and most prosperous middle class has been replaced by a startling contradiction: corporateprofits, economic growth, and worker productivity have grown strongly while worker pay has languished and Americans face ever-greater pressures to work harder and longer.

Greenhouse also examines companies that are generous to their workers and can serve as models for all of corporate America: Costco, Patagonia, and the casino-hotels of Las Vegas among them. Finally, he presents a series of pragmatic, ready-to-be-implemented suggestions on what government, business, and labor should do to alleviate the squeeze.

A balanced, consistently revealing exploration of a major American crisis.

The Washington Post - H. W. Brands

Greenhouse has covered the labor beat for the New York Times for more than a decade, and his reporting skills serve his book's readers well. He alternates vignettes from the lives of individual workers with passages revealing the broader economic and political forces shaping workers' predicament…His recommendations for change—a higher minimum wage, better enforcement of laws against employers' cheating on wages, universal health insurance, mandatory retirement accounts in addition to Social Security, renewed government support for labor unions, transition training for workers laid off by outsourcing, a recommitment to public education—are reasonable and appropriate. But the current plight of American workers has been decades in the making, and absent a catastrophic failure of the system, it is hard to imagine how government will summon the will to effect the changes Greenhouse proposes.