The China price : the true cost of Chinese competitive advantage / Alexandra Harney.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harney, Alexandra.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Manufacturing industries--Social aspects--China.

Manufacturing industries.

Manufacturing industries--Social aspects.

Commerce.

Social aspects.

China.

Costs, Industrial--Social aspects--China.

Costs, Industrial.

China--Commerce--Social aspects.

Physical Description:

336 pages : map ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Penguin Press, 2008.

Summary:

Journalist Alex Harney shows how China is able to offer such amazingly low prices to the rest of the world. What she has discovered is a brutal world in which intense pricing pressure from Western companies combines with corruption and a lack of transparency to exact an unseen toll in human misery and environmental damage. Despite a decade of monitoring, foreign businessmen all too often have no idea of the conditions under which goods they buy are made. But change is coming. A generation of Chinese flocked from the rural interior to the coastal factories, in the largest mass migration in human history--but that migration has slowed dramatically. As pollution worsens and infrastructure buckles, and grassroots activism grows, pressures are mounting that will not dissipate without profound change. Managing the violence of that change is China's greatest challenge in the near future, and managing its impact on the world economy may be ours.--From publisher description.

Contents:

Hooked

The five star factory

The physical cost

The gold rush

The stirring masses

The girls of room 817

Accounts and accountability

The new model factory

The future of the China price.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [313]-319) and index.

ISBN:

9781594201578

1594201579

OCLC:

183162376