Paper Tigers Hidden Dragons

China presents us with a conundrum. How has a developing country with a spectacularly inefficient financial system, coupled with asset-destroying state-owned firms, managed to create a number of vibrant high-tech firms? China's domestic financial system fails most private firms by neglecting to give them sufficient support to pursue technological upgrading, even while smothering state-favoured firms by providing them with too much support. Due to their foreign financing, multinational corporations suffer from neither insufficient funds nor soft budget constraints, but they are insufficiently committed to China's development. Hybrid firms that combine ethnic Chinese management and foreign financing are the hidden dragons driving China's technological development. They avoid the maladies of China's domestic financial system while remaining committed to enhancing China's domestic technological capabilities. In sad contrast, China's domestic firms are technological paper tigers. State efforts to build local innovation clusters and create national champions have not managed to transform these firms into drivers of technological development. These findings upend fundamental debates about China's political economy. Rather than a choice between state capitalism and building domestic market institutions, China has fostered state capitalism even while tolerating the importing of foreign market institutions. While the book's findings suggest that China's state and domestic market institutions are ineffective, the hybrids promise an alternative way to avoid the middle-income trap. By documenting how variation in China's institutional terrain impacts technological development, the book also provides much needed nuance to widespread yet mutually irreconcilable claims that China is either an emerging innovation power or a technological backwater. Looking beyond China, hybrid-led development has implications for new alternative economic development models and new ways to conceptualize contemporary capitalism that go beyond current domestic institution-centric approaches.

China presents us with a conundrum. How has a developing country with a spectacularly inefficient financial system, coupled with asset-destroying state-owned firms, managed to create a number of vibrant high-tech firms? China's domestic financial system fails most private firms by neglecting to give them sufficient support to pursue technological upgrading, even while smothering state-favoured firms by providing them with too much support. Due to their foreign financing, multinational corporations suffer from neither insufficient funds nor soft budget constraints, but they are insufficiently committed to China's development. Hybrid firms that combine ethnic Chinese management and foreign financing are the hidden dragons driving China's technological development. They avoid the maladies of China's domestic financial system while remaining committed to enhancing China's domestic technological capabilities. In sad contrast, China's domestic firms are technological paper tigers. State efforts to build local innovation clusters and create national champions have not managed to transform these firms into drivers of technological development. These findings upend fundamental debates about China's political economy. Rather than a choice between state capitalism and building domestic market institutions, China has fostered state capitalism even while tolerating the importing of foreign market institutions. While the book's findings suggest that China's state and domestic market institutions are ineffective, the hybrids promise an alternative way to avoid the middle-income trap. By documenting how variation in China's institutional terrain impacts technological development, the book also provides much needed nuance to widespread yet mutually irreconcilable claims that China is either an emerging innovation power or a technological backwater. Looking beyond China, hybrid-led development has implications for new alternative economic development models and new ways to conceptualize contemporary capitalism that go beyond current domestic institution-centric approaches.

Welcome to a brave new world of capitalism propelled by high tech, guarded by enterprising authority, and carried forward by millions of laborers being robbed of their souls. Gathered into mammoth factory complexes and terrified into obedience, these workers feed the world's addiction to iPhones and other commodities--a generation of iSlaves trapped in a global economic system that relies upon and studiously ignores their oppression. Focusing on the alliance between Apple and the notorious Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn, Jack Linchuan Qiu examines how corporations and governments everywhere collude to build systems of domination, exploitation, and alienation. His interviews, news analysis, and first-hand observation show the circumstances faced by Foxconn workers--circumstances with vivid parallels in the Atlantic slave trade. Qiu also shows how the fanatic consumption of digital media also creates compulsive free labor that constitutes a form of bondage for the user. Arguing as a digital abolitionist, Qiu draws inspiration from transborder activist groups and forms of grassroots resistance to make a passionate plea aimed at uniting--and liberating--the forgotten workers who make our twenty-first-century lives possible.

A young boy runs away from home to rescue an abused baby dragon held captive to serve as a free twenty-four hour, seven-days-a-week ferry for the lazy wild animals living on Wild Island.

Animals abound in Dr. Seuss’s Caldecott Honor–winning picture book If I Ran the Zoo. Gerald McGrew imagines the myriad of animals he’d have in his very own zoo, and the adventures he’ll have to go on in order to gather them all. Featuring everything from a lion with ten feet to a Fizza-ma-Wizza-ma-Dill, this is a classic Seussian crowd-pleaser. In fact, one of Gerald’s creatures has even become a part of the language: the Nerd!

Resurgent Asia analyses the phenomenal transformation of Asia, which would have been difficult to imagine, let alone predict, fifty years ago, when Gunnar Myrdal published Asian Drama. In doing so, it provides an analytical narrative of this remarkable story of economic development, situated in its wider context of historical, political, and social factors, and an economic analysis of the underlying factors, with a focus on critical issues in the process of, and outcomes in, development. In 1970, Asia was the poorest continent in the world, marginal except for its large population. By 2016, it accounted for three-tenths of world income, two-fifths of world manufacturing, and one-third of world trade, while its income per capita converged towards the world average. However, this transformation was associated with unequal outcomes across countries and between people. The analysis disaggregates Asia into its four constituent sub-regions--East, Southeast, South, and West--and further into fourteen economies--China, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Turkey, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka--which account for more than four-fifths of its population and income. This book enhances our understanding of development processes and outcomes in Asia over the past fifty years, draws out the analytical conclusions that contribute to contemporary debates on development, and highlights some lessons from the Asian experience for countries elsewhere. It is the first to examine the phenomenal changes that are transforming economies in Asia and shifting the balance of economic power in the world, while reflecting on the future prospects in Asia over the next twenty-five years. A rich, engaging, and fascinating read.

On Wilde Island, there is no peace between dragons, fairies, and humans. Wilde Island is in an uproar over the recent death of its king. As the uneasy pact between dragons, fairies, and humans begins to fray, the royal witch hunter with a hidden agenda begins a vengeful quest to burn girls suspected of witchcraft before a new king is crowned.. Strong-willed Tess, a blacksmith’s daughter from a tiny hamlet, wants more for herself than a husband and a house to keep. But in times like these wanting more can be dangerous. Accused of witchery, Tess and her two friends are forced to flee the violent witch hunter. As their pursuer draws ever closer they find shelter with a huntsman in the outskirts of the forbidden Dragonswood sanctuary. But staying with the mysterious huntsman poses risks of its own: Tess does not know how to handle the attraction she feels for him—or resist the elusive call that draws her deeper onto the heart of Dragonswood.

“Dragonworld goes far beyond the flashy pyrotechnics of contemporary fantasy and fantasy illustration. Joe Zucker is a superlative and original illustrator, and he reveals a rare and astonishing gift for infusing a richness of character into his pictures, which do justice to Byron Preiss's and Michael Reaves's compelling story.” —Maurice Sendak “Until now, there have been only two real grandmasters of modern epic fantasy—J.R.R. Tolkien and Ann McCaffrey. With the team of Preiss and Reaves, there are three, and may they write and write and write.” —United Press International Somewhere beyond the northern mists lies a land where dreams live and dragons are real. This is the tale of the twilight of the dragons, of two nations plunged into war by a tragic misunderstanding, of a shy dreamer's incredible voyage of peace to a long-forgotten land where nightmares are born. A magnificent creation, a sweeping epic of high fantasy set in a richly imagined world, vividly brought to life with over eighty pages of stunning illustrations by Joseph Zucker.