Beijing Jeep: The Short, Unhappy Romance of American Business in China FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
When American Motors Corporation in 1979 undertook a joint venture with Beijing Auto Works to manufacture jeeps in China, the two parties had divergent aims, according to this informative, well-researched account by a Los Angeles Times Far East correspondent. AMC saw a new market ``opened up'' by China's friendlier attitude toward foreign business, but the Americans eventually concluded that what the Chinese really wanted was Western technology. After years of bedeviled negotiation of monetary arrangements, product dimensions and management structure, jeeps eventually did roll off the Beijing assembly line. China's low living standards and lack of foreign exchange, however, made a consumer boom highly unlikely in any case, notes Mann. With Chrysler's purchase of AMC in 1987 the Beijing partnership began to break up, and ended with the Westerners' departure after the massacres in Tiananmen Square. First serial to Fortune. (Dec.)
Library Journal
Los Angeles Times reporter Mann finished this book after the June 1989 student revolts, and his tone reflects the more sober, less eager approach Americans are taking toward China and business in China these days. Here, Mann has skillfully woven together the story of the venture to produce the American Motor Company (AMC) Jeep in China, a project greeted with enthusiasm but one that, as Mann shows, turned out to be plagued by difficulties, mostly because of culture clash. Mann provides more details about Sino-American business than in Graeme Browning's If Everyone Bought One Shoe: American Capitalism in Communist China ( LJ 6/1/89). Readers who are willing to accept some painful self-examination about the way Americans have been doing business in China will find this a fascinating book.--David D. Buck, Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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