China is far more than just another Asia Inc
It has become a rite of passage - and generally a curse - for dynamic Asian economies to attract the label "Inc" in books that predict how they will transform the world order.
After Japan Inc in the 1980s, shortly followed by Korea and the other regional tigers, economic pundits are now in awe of China's rise and a batch of new books is analysing the impact of "the next superpower".
Two of these books rightly portray China's economic resurgence as very different from that of earlier Asia Incs. Rejecting tired notions of uniform formulas or "Asian values", they recognise the complexities as well as the undoubted scale of the upheaval it is causing.
Both books have their breathless moments. But then some of their claims are breathtaking. According to Ted Fishman, almost as many Chinese study English as a second language as there are English-speakers in the US, Canada and the UK combined. Oded Shenkar adds that Wal-Mart imports more goods from China than do Britain or France.
Beyond the big numbers, and of greater importance, is how these books assess the nature of China's resurgence and why, to quote Shenkar, it "has more in common with the rise of the United States a century earlier than with the progress of its modern-day predecessors".
China's relatively open domestic market is a crucial consideration. Whereas Korea and Japan became synonymous with protectionism, multinationals have flocked through China's more open doors.
For both authors the implications are substantial. "China is the only country in the world where domestic automotive makers maintain equity ventures with competing foreign partners which make it possible to learn best practices from both and end up with potentially more knowledge than either," writes Shenkar.
The lure of the mainland market also helps explain the apparent contradiction between a business environment rife with piracy and $50bn plus of annual foreign investment.
Shenkar charts a compelling course through the impact of China's awesome production base - through international retail markets, prices, consumers and ultimately into social divisions in the west. The coincidence of huge-scale, low-cost production and the consolidation of global retailers, he argues, has accelerated and amplified China's impact. "They [retailers] have the market presence to sell an untested brand," he writes.
The flood of consumer goods into global markets and the opposite flow of capital to China creates divisions and tensions at the social and political level. Toyotas were once hacked to pieces in Detroit as part of a "buy American" campaign. However, as Shenkar argues, the scale of investment by multinationals in China, the importance of outsourcing for cost-competitiveness and the price benefits for consumers suggest any meaningful "anti-China" coalition is now unlikely.
Both books demonstrate how the range and depth of interactions between the US and Chinese economies reduce the constraints on China's rise. But if the theses are similar, the styles are rather different. Whereas Shenkar, an academic, builds a more theoretical case, Fishman, a journalist, has a magpie's eye for the interesting fact and a few big ideas. Thus, he suggests that the US will be disadvantaged by its lack of Mandarin speakers, citing a recent count of just 50,000 Chinese language students in American high schools. "One must ask who will be the better global managers - native speakers of English working in China who rely on their bilingual local managers or Chinese managers who can deal with their workers directly."
Where both books fall short is in assessing the flaws in the Chinese system. China's rise may well be different from that of Japan and Korea. But it is worth remembering that their "unstoppable" marches halted abruptly amid much hubris. In Korea, the Asian financial crisis revealed corrupt allocation of credit. Japan turned out to be sclerotic.
Many of China's faultlines arestrikingly similar to those that derailed its precursors. Its banksare hobbled by bad loans. And,as with Korea's tumultuous transition to democracy, China's economic rise could carry the seeds of its own destruction through the social divisions and expectations it creates.
These are important omissions, even within the books' own terms of reference. For a Chinese crash could pose as big a global challenge as the continued rise they predict.
The writer is the editor of the FT's Asia edition 书评：中国崛起的咒语
《中国公司》 (China Inc) ，作者：特德? C ?费什曼 (Ted C Fishman) ，出版社： Scribner ，定价： 26 美元。
《中国人的世纪》 (The Chinese Century) ，作者：奥蒂德?申卡尔 (Oded Shenkar) ，出版社：沃顿商学院出版社 / 培生教育 (Wharton School Publishing/Pearson Education) ，定价： 29.95 美元。
在预测充满活力的亚洲各经济体将如何改变世界格局的书中，为这些经济体贴上“公司” (Inc) 的标签，这已成为一种成人仪式，而且往往也是个咒语。
上世纪 80 年代有日本公司 (Japan Inc) 一说，不久，韩国和亚洲地区其它小虎经济体也被冠以“公司”之名。如今，经济大师们则对中国的崛起惊叹不已，而一大批新书正在分析“下一个超级大国”将带来的冲击。
其中有两本书恰如其分地描述说，中国的经济复兴与先前一些亚洲公司的经济复兴非常不同。两本书抛弃了统一模式或“亚洲价值观”等陈旧概念，意识到中国崛起引发的巨变相当复杂，且规模之大毋庸置疑。
两本书都有些沉闷的章节。但书中一些说法闻所未闻。据特德?费什曼说，将英语作为第二语言进行学习的中国人，和美国、加拿大，及英国以英语为母语的人几乎一样多。奥蒂德?申卡尔补充说，沃尔玛 (Wal-Mart) 从中国进口的货物比英国或法国进口的还要多。
在这些大数字的背后，而且更重要的是，这些书是如何评估中国复兴的本质，以及它为何（用申卡尔的话来说）“与一个世纪前美国的崛起、而不是与当代先行崛起国家的进步有更多共同之处”。
中国相对开放的国内市场是个值得考虑的关键因素。随着韩国和日本成了保护主义的代名词，许多跨国公司已蜂拥进入中国更加开放的大门。
对两位作者而言，其中的意义重大。“中国是世界上唯一一个这样的国家：其国内汽车制造商同与之竞争的外国合作伙伴建立合资企业，这样企业就有可能学到双方的最佳运作，而最终可能得到比合作双方更多的知识，”申卡尔写道。
大陆市场的吸引力有助于解释一对显见的矛盾，即中国盗版猖獗的商业环境和每年逾 500 亿美元的外国投资。
申卡尔描绘了一条有说服力的路线，即中国令人生畏的生产基地的影响――通过国际零售市场、价格、消费者，最终进入西方的各个社会领域。他认为，中国大规模、低成本的生产，巧逢全球零售商的整合行动，这已加快并放大了中国的影响力。“凭借在市场的势力，它们（零售商）可以销售未经检验的品牌，”他写道。
中国的消费品潮水般涌入全球各市场，资本又反向流入中国，这已在社会和政治层面造成了分裂和紧张态势。在“买美国货”运动中，丰田 (Toyota) 车在底特律曾被砸成碎片。但申卡尔认为，跨国公司在中国的投资规模、为保持成本竞争力而进行外包的重要性，以及消费者在价格上获得的益处表明，目前不太可能出现任何有意义的“反华”联盟。
两本书都论证了中美经济交流的广度和深度将减少中国的崛起所受的制约。但如果说两书在这些地方观点相似，那么它们的风格很不一样。学术界人士申卡尔进行了更具理论性的论证，记者费什曼则纵观了有趣的事实和一些重要思想。因此他表示，美国将因缺少会说普通话的人而处于不利地位，并援引了一项最新统计数据：美国的中学只有 5 万名学生学中文。“你肯定会问，谁将成为更好的全球企业管理者？是那些在华工作并以英语为母语的管理者（他们通常要依靠精通中英双语的本地经理），还是能直接与员工打交道的中国经理人？”
两本书的不足之处是对中国体制缺陷的评价方面。中国的崛起也许与日本、韩国的崛起很不相同。但有必要记住，由于狂妄自大，日韩两国“不可阻挡”的前进步伐骤然停顿下来。在韩国，亚洲金融危机揭示了腐败的信贷分配状况。而事实证明日本体制僵化。
日韩的缺陷阻断了它们的前进步伐，中国也有许多与这两个先行崛起的国家非常相似的缺陷。坏账令中国的银行不堪重负，此外，正如韩国向民主制的过渡是个喧嚣动乱的过程，中国的经济崛起也可能造成社会分化和它所产生的各种期望，因而带有自行毁灭的恶种。
这些都是重大的遗漏，这两本书的参考术语也有这样的问题。因为中国的崩溃可能会构成巨大的全球挑战，其程度不亚于它们的崛起。
作者是《金融时报》亚洲版总编辑
