Death by China

Book review from Terence T. Burton, President and CEO

The Center for Excellence in Operations, Inc. (CEO), Bedford, New Hampshire USA

Death by China, Confronting the Dragon - A Global Call to Action,  by Peter Navarro and Greg Autry, 2011

Death By China provides a candid understanding of the realities behind what Navarro and Autry call China's assault on America and the global economy.  According to the authors, China is attacking on every front, with every available economic, political, and policy weapon - from protectionism to cyber attacks to espionage to currency manipulations and much more!  They say that China is doing whatever it takes to capture crucial resources, even if it means backroom nuclear proliferation by the world's most dangerous regimes.  This book tells an incredible story about China's deliberate, engineered power shift in the global economy.

China's competitive edge comes from a complex array of eight unfair trade practices - each of which is expressly forbidden under true fair trade rules.  The authors outline the "Eight Weapons of Job Destruction," including:

1.      An elaborate web of illegal export subsidies;

2.      A cleverly manipulated and grossly undervalued currency;

3.      The blatant counterfeiting, piracy, and outright theft of America's intellectual property treasures with absolutely no consequences;

4.      An incredible unwillingness to deal with massive environmental damage in favor of  continued production cost advantage;

5.      Grossly inadequate health and safety standards that create brown lung, butchered limbs, and a dizzying array of cancers;

6.      Unlawful tariffs, quotas, and other export restrictions on key raw materials as a ploy to gain full control over the world's metallurgy and heavy equipment;

7.      Predatory pricing and dumping practices that push foreign competition out of key market opportunities, and then gouge consumers with monopoly pricing; and

8.      China's protectionism policies, disguised tariffs and quotas, inflated customs duties, domestic content laws, and other barriers to keep foreign competitors from setting up shop on Chinese soil.

Fair trade is in fact a mirage.  Rebuilding a U.S. manufacturing base is much more complex than re-looking at the total cost of ownership or talking patriotic decisions to re-shore products back home.  The book provides a wake-up call about what happens when the West is focused on the next quarter, while China has been focused on the next quarter of a century.  The authors describe the past decades as a period of no honor among thieves - and no patriotism among American corporations.      

China has graduated from the factory floor and is now hacking the internet to batter down the firewalls of industrial, financial, academic, political, and military information systems around the world,  looking for valuable data and quietly documenting vulnerabilities that can be exploited  for further future devastating effects. 

The outsourcing policies of the past decades have also greatly accelerated the development of China's military capabilities.  In the event of a hot war, where will the U.S. manufacture performance clothing, armaments, equipment, and supplies?  The manufacturing base that was converted to provide these products is gone . . . and do you think China will sell their enemy these products?  This book leaves one wondering, "If half of the contents of this book is fact, we are in deep xxxx!  What the hell have we done to our economy, our country, our future generations in the interest of short term profits?"

The later chapters provide a prescription for breaking down the "Eight Weapons of Job Destruction."  It is blatantly obvious that the solutions are complex and will take years of combined industry, regulatory, legal, and political policy to unravel.   Meanwhile, one can only hope that the American liberty bell shakes executives and leaders out of their slumber so that they finally realize that China's economic policies are bankrupting the United States of America.

I enjoyed reading this book.  Five stars to Death by China!  Great job Peter Navarro and Greg Autry