A clumsy, shallow effort...November 27, 2008 Meredith's book is an attempt to describe and articulate the newly-fashionable theme of the China and India's rise to political and economic prominence.
However, the book lacks a coherent plan of detailing its facts and linking them in a sensible way. The author jumps from one set of facts in one paragraph to some totally unrelated commentary in the next and then comes back to the first set of facts in a later section. This patterns keeps repeating througout the book, giving the reader a feeling this is a hastily cobbled collection of one-paragraph magazine articles. There's precious new information presented, as the author has made no effort to research beyond the top layer of Chinese and Indian economies i.e apparel factories and call centers respectively.
I would highly recommend Edward Luce's book on India (Inspite of the Gods)as a more substantive and detailed book on emerging India. I'm sure there are better books on China as well, though I'm not as informed on those choices.
Great Book!November 24, 2008 Very informative book. Vividly illuminates how development in central Asia is reshaping the world market place.
elephant and dragonNovember 11, 2008 great turnaround. in south africa it took a week from date of ordering to delivery
Fresh insight into the business and cultural particularities of two countriesOctober 29, 2008 The author offers some good material about business trends in China and India and talks as well about the cultural and psychological factors which played an important role for the recent economic transformations in these countries. The description of the problems hindering a long-term development in India and China (corruption and infrastructure difficulties in India, Chinese communistic mindsets and government overregulations) is really interesting. The book proposes some recommendations for Americans and some predictions about Chinese manufacturing and their next economical targets, but this part doesn't sound convincible. Given the economic crisis, the predictions are no longer valid. I think however that some US consumers will shift from high-end products towards middle-end products. If the Chinese manufacturers can shift a part of their low-end production to middle-range products China could emerge event stronger from this crisis.
As the United States descends two new stars are on the riseOctober 21, 2008 China is the world's new manufacturing powerhouse while India is vying to supersede the United States by producing more code, more engineers and more scientists, although this book (I listened to the unabridged audio book) mostly focuses on the technology support services.
Many of the items you buy in your local Wal-Mart are now designed in India and produced in China. Why? Because the United States cannot be competitive without innovation. It cannot compete in world markets when it produces less engineers, less scientists and less computer programmers - all of whom demand ten times the salary of the abundantly available Indian counterparts grasping for their own meteoric rise to a materially wealthy lifestyle. The Elephant and the Dragon explain the how and why of the global economics that are currently rocking the U.S. to its foundation.
It may already be too late to recapture what made America the "shining light on the hill" but this book is a captivating look into the two vast countries that will replace us in the next century as the world's dominant suppliers of goods and services.
