Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14475 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-06
• Released on: 2004-01-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A professor at Yale Law School, Chua eloquently fuses expert analysis with personal recollections to assert that globalization has created a volatile concoction of free markets and democracy that has incited economic devastation, ethnic hatred and genocidal violence throughout the developing world. Chua illustrates the disastrous consequences arising when an accumulation of wealth by "market dominant minorities" combines with an increase of political power by a disenfranchised majority. Chua refutes the "powerful assumption that markets and democracy go hand in hand" by citing specific examples of the turbulent conditions within countries such as Indonesia, Russia, Sierra Leone, Bolivia and in the Middle East. In Indonesia, Chua contends, market liberalization policies favoring wealthy Chinese elites instigated a vicious wave of anti-Chinese violence from the suppressed indigenous majority. Chua describes how "terrified Chinese shop owners huddled behind locked doors while screaming Muslim mobs smashed windows, looted shops and gang-raped over 150 women, almost all of them ethnic Chinese." Chua blames the West for promoting a version of capitalism and democracy that Westerners have never adopted themselves. Western capitalism wisely implemented redistributive mechanisms to offset potential ethnic hostilities, a practice that has not accompanied the political and economic transitions in the developing world. As a result, Chua explains, we will continue to witness violence and bloodshed within the developing nations struggling to adopt the free markets and democratic policies exported by the West. (On sale Dec. 24)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Globalization is not good for developing countries, insists Yale law professor Chua. It aggravates ethnic tensions by creating a small but abundantly wealthy new class and it's stimulating a new wave of anti-Americanism.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Provocative, evocative, nuanced, and highly readable. . . . Amy Chua deserves our gratitude." —The Washington Post

“Fascinating and disturbing . . . with an authority born of rigorous research.” —BusinessWeek

“World on Fire deserves to be widely read. It is a welcome antidote to the recycled mantras of the market-cheering right and the tired rhetoric of the anti-globalization left.” —The American Prospect

"Superb. . . . Encourages us to confront the world as it is, and our actual place in it, with a humane and intellectually formidable imagination." —The New York Observer

"A riveting and original book that challenges key tenets of American political faith." —The Baltimore Sun

“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

Customer Reviews

Why is the world on fire? -- The primary answer may be . . . . .
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 native, assimilated 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 the unintended consequences 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 or quite often their indigenous 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 ignored, then encouraged the onset of "gladiator capitalism." Putin 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 -- the 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.

Arguably, 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.

A View of the World from the Dark Side
Excellent and compelling.

I travel internationally 6 months of the year throughout the world, but even so, this book exposed a shadowy dark underbelly I was unaware of. The author's arguments are fresh, novel. believable and compelling.

Anyone interested in world dynamics and the rapid pace of change that is affecting the entire planet will welcome this innovative and paradigm shifting book.

Market-dominant Minorities breed instability
Amy Chua writes about a subject that should get far more attention than it does: that most of the developing world has ethnic minorities that dominate the economy and that the majority are fundamentally hostile to the minority. Chua claims that the economic and political reforms pushed by the West fail to take into account this fact and, therefore, the result is repeated instability and violence.

Free markets mainly benefit the ethnic minorities that already have the wealth, business connections and social capital, while doing little to benefit the masses. Democracy empowers the ethnic majority, who then use that power to persecute the market-dominant minorities. While Chua clearly beliefs that free market democracies are essential to the stability and prosperity of developing countries, she is ultimately very gloomy about the possibilities of a smooth and fast transition.

Chua starts by showing that, in contrast to the Western nations, developing countries invariably have a very small ethnic minority that dominates the economy. In Latin America and southern Africa, it the whites. In Southeast Asia, it is the Chinese. In Central and East Africa, it is the Lebanese and Indians. In Russia, it is the Jews. In West Africa, it is the Ibo and Lebanese. Most of this is not new, Charles Sowell for example has written about this subject in great depth, but it is a topic that has been seriously neglected.

Chua then shows that Western efforts to push free market and democratic reforms have one of the three following results:
1) Ethnic majorities use their new-found political power to nationalize companies owned by market-dominant minorities.
2) Market-dominant minorities protect themselves by supporting coups against the hostile democracies, leading to "crony capitalism."
3) In the most extreme cases, ethnic majorities undertake ethnic cleansing and genocide to eliminate market-dominant minorities.

One of the most interesting and thought-provoking sections in this book is about Jews in the Middle East and Americans globally. Each can be seen as international market-dominant minorities. While the rest of the book is focused on a minority in a specific nation, Chua shows that the same angst and violence that is focused on national minorities is also focused on the Jews in the Middle East and American globally. Because Jews and Americans are different ethnic groups who benefit disproportionately from free markets, the majorities focus their hatred on them.

Finally, Chua wraps up with a serie of recommendations on what to do. This is probably the weakest part of the book, because she has caught herself in a conundrum. She has spent the entire book attacking Western promoted economic and political reforms, but she still believes that such reform is essential in the long-run. Her most interesting proposal is for market-dominant minorities to use philanthropy in their home nation to help the majority, particularly by funding high-profile national symbols. She also makes the case that Western nations need to be aware of the fact that nations with market-dominant minorities will react fundamentally differently to free market and democracy than ones that do not.

Chua's main contribution is to introduce readers to the concept of market-dominant minorities: a concept that every observer of international affairs should be aware of (but few appear to be). For this, she deserves a five star rating. But the book has a number of glaring flaw that drop the rating to four stars.

My main problem with this book are the following:

1) Chua never shows how much the market-dominant minorities benefit their own nation. Charles Sowell shows that these minorities are often the drivers of their nation's economies conferring great benefits on the majority. Chua occasionally implies this, but more often she focuses on the suffering of the masses and the implication that their hatred of the rich minorities is partly justified. I wish she were more clear as to the tremendous benefits that market-dominant minorities bring, and the fundamental irrationality of the haters.
2) Chua continually claims that free markets and democracy are breeding or at least exacerbating ethnic tensions, but she never gives any evidence of to an increase in ethnic tension over the last generation. She does give a lot of examples of ethnic riots, murders, nationalizations and coups, but she never shows that the frequency and severity have increased over the last generation. My guess is that the facts would show the opposite, completely argument against reform. Chua also makes frequent references to leftist/communist dictatorships of the past oppressing market-dominant minorities (a very interesting point), but she casually skips over the fact that this completely contradicts her overall argument. Anti-market authoritarian regimes are just as capable as market democracies of oppressing market-dominant minorities
3) Sometimes Chua appears to be far too pessimistic about the standard-of-living of poor ethnic majorities in developing countries. She continually states that they are left behind by economic reform, but she never gives any concrete evidence. Based upon the hundreds of millions of people who have been lifted out of poverty in the last generation, it is difficult for me to believe that the contrast is as stark as she suggests. Clearly the progress is not as fast or as widespread as we would like, but it is not the stark ethnic divide that she suggests.
4) Chua is also quick to label authoritarian regimes as "democratic" to support her argument. To label Zimbabwe, Serbia and Rwanda in the 1990s as democracies (to give just three examples) is a bit disingenuous. They were actually some of the most authoritarian and anti-market regimes in the world. If she had a tighter definition, I think that she would find that the authoritarian regimes are just as capable as democracies of oppressing market-dominant minorities. It is quite possible that these anti-market authoritarian regimes are worse for their country than the ethnic tension that Chua says market economies breed.

Overall, though, I would highly recommend this book.