China airborne

by James M. Fallows

Hardcover, 2012

Status

Available

Publication

New York : Pantheon Books, c2012.

Description

Evaluates China's plan to rival America as a leading aerospace power, revealing the nation's considerable investments in airports and airplane construction while making recommendations for how the United States should respond.

User reviews

LibraryThing member rivkat
Short book about China’s possibly burgeoning aeronautic industry, and the challenges and opportunities it faces/offers. Fallows emphasizes that there’s a huge amount of divergence in conditions across China, but also that there’s a great sense of possibility for improvement—something that
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often seems lacking in the US, where we don’t expect our government to do much that’s big. Of course, there’s plenty of cronyism and dysfunction in China; much of China’s investment in aeronautics may end up wasted as it produces planes that are too heavy and fails to innovate at the design end. Or not: Fallows concludes that anyone who claims to know what’s really going to happen in China is deluded at best. It sounds wishy-washy, but I found it a useful portrait of a fast-churning environment in which giant successes and failures are possible—and likely to have world-wide effects.
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LibraryThing member zot79
Having not read too much about life in China, other than what occasionally makes it into the news, I found this to be a thought-provoking, if somewhat repetitive, analysis of the aerospace industry in China. I had not given enough thought to how a Communist country even went about trying to foster
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a high-tech industry that seems to thrive on competition and innovation. The answer, as seen in this book, is that it cannot. As long as the government sets the parameters for growth and success, its version of the industry will always be at least a step behind the rest of the world.

This book is easy to read and often interesting. The main issue is that about a third of the way through, the author has really made all of his main points. The rest of the book becomes more of the same. But if you haven't kept up with what's going on in China, this can be an easy way to get a glimpse inside.
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Language

Local notes

Inscribed to Eric by the author

Barcode

4188
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