World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Examining the actual impact of economic globalization in every region of the world, from Africa and Asia to Russia and Latin America, Chua exposes an unexpected reality. In every one of these regions, free markets have concentrated disproportionate, often spectacular wealth in the hands of a resented ethnic minority." "Adding democracy to this volatile mix unleashes suppressed ethnic hatreds and brings to power ethno nationalist governments that pursue aggressive policies of confiscation and revenge. Chua also shows how individual countries may be viewed as market-dominant minorities at the regional or global level, a fact that may help to explain the Arab-Israeli conflict and the rising tide of anti-American sentiment around the world. America today has become the world's leading market-dominant minority, enjoying wealth and economic power wildly disproportionate to our numbers. This, perhaps more than anything else, accounts for the visceral hatred of Americans that we have seen expressed in recent acts of terrorism." Chua warns that, far from making the world a better and safer place, democracy and capitalism - at least in the raw, unrestrained form in which they are currently being exported - are intensifying ethnic resentment and global violence, with potentially catastrophic results.
SYNOPSIS
The pursuit of free markets in the developing world tends to concentrate wealth in the hands of a minority, leading invariably to one of three forms of backlash, argues Chua (Yale Law School). Contrary to neoliberal orthodoxy, free markets and democracy do not necessarily coincide, she contends. She describes cases where the concentration of wealth among an "outsider" minority leads to an ethnically targeted anti-market backlash (Mugabe's Zimbabwe), an anti- democracy backlash favorable to the market-dominant minority (Marcos's Philippines), or violent backlash directed against the market-dominant minority itself (Rwanda). She argues for the promotion of market democracy, but cautions against an "unrestrained" approach. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
A professor at Yale Law School, Chua eloquently fuses expert analysis with personal recollections to assert that globalization has created a volatile concoction of free markets and democracy that has incited economic devastation, ethnic hatred and genocidal violence throughout the developing world. Chua illustrates the disastrous consequences arising when an accumulation of wealth by "market dominant minorities" combines with an increase of political power by a disenfranchised majority. Chua refutes the "powerful assumption that markets and democracy go hand in hand" by citing specific examples of the turbulent conditions within countries such as Indonesia, Russia, Sierra Leone, Bolivia and in the Middle East. In Indonesia, Chua contends, market liberalization policies favoring wealthy Chinese elites instigated a vicious wave of anti-Chinese violence from the suppressed indigenous majority. Chua describes how "terrified Chinese shop owners huddled behind locked doors while screaming Muslim mobs smashed windows, looted shops and gang-raped over 150 women, almost all of them ethnic Chinese." Chua blames the West for promoting a version of capitalism and democracy that Westerners have never adopted themselves. Western capitalism wisely implemented redistributive mechanisms to offset potential ethnic hostilities, a practice that has not accompanied the political and economic transitions in the developing world. As a result, Chua explains, we will continue to witness violence and bloodshed within the developing nations struggling to adopt the free markets and democratic policies exported by the West. (On sale Dec. 24) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Globalization is not good for developing countries, insists Yale law professor Chua. It aggravates ethnic tensions by creating a small but abundantly wealthy new class and it's stimulating a new wave of anti-Americanism. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A nuanced contribution to the debate over whether free markets spread democracy or merely advance the McDonaldsization of the globe. The answer, writes Chua (Law/Yale Univ.), is that they do both—and then some, depending on local conditions. But more often than not, Chua holds, the imposition of so-called "free markets" in the so-called "developing world" means that a ruling elite, often ethnically distinct from the mass of the ruled, prospers far out of proportion to its number. By way of illustration, Chua offers, imagine that Chinese-Americans, representing about two percent of the US population, controlled the countryﾽs largest banks and most of its productive real estate, while the 75 percent of the population considered "white" owned no land and, worse, "had experienced no upward mobility as far back as anyone can remember": transfer the scenario abroad, "and you will have approximated the core social dynamic that characterizes much of the non-Western world." Market forces that bring still more wealth into the hands of the minority—Chinese, in the case of Indonesia, or Lebanese in the case of Sierra Leone—necessarily breed dissent and ethnic hatred. Political liberalization may do nothing to ease the tensions, Chua adds. Democratization in the Middle East, for instance, would likely mean only the rise of nationalist and fundamentalist regimes; corrupt and autocratic though they may be, the regionﾽs kings are still more liberal than those who would replace them should the majority rule. All this is very provocative, to be sure, but Chua defends her case well (and adds a damning footnote to the history of Enron along the way). Globalism is a fact of modern life, sheconcludes, but one destined to yield much bloodshed in the years to come—unless, she adds, the privileged minorities do the smart thing: spread the wealth while they still can. An antidote to the typical one-market tidings, and bad news for those contemplating investments abroad.
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