Danielle Steussy

Winter Quarter 2010

Book Review:
The Elephant and the Dragon by Robyn Meredith

Overview

In the book The Elephant and the Dragon, Robyn Meredith depicts the rise of the two
global economic powers: China and India. She fills the pages with detailed stories,
stunning statistics, and insight on what the United States needs to do to compete with the
two countries.
Meredith begins by describing the evolution of the Chinese participation in the
global economy. In detail, she presents the country’s history starting with the reign of
Chairman Mao in 1949 and the poverty that existed as a result of China’s strive for
communism. Food shortages lead to numerous starvations and even the ultimate act of yi
zi er shi, in which neighbors traded skinny children and ate them, knowing that their
neighbors were doing the same to their child (19). Whole villages vanished while China
continued to export most of its food for money. It wasn’t until Deng Xiaoping entered the
scene several years later that China began to modernize and introduce China to
capitalism. Since then, China has risen at an astounding rate to become the economic
giant that it is today given its strict enforcement of communism that has given the
government the ability to develop the country’s infrastructure. More than ever, Chinese
citizens are able to afford luxuries that Americans would consider necessities due to
fruitful work opportunities in the factories. Many are content with the improved way of
life yet they are still politically repressed. Meredith states that even 30 years after Mao’s
death, “Chinese are still allowed to carry only money, not voter’s identity cards, in their
new wallets” (27).
As the Chinese suffered politically and achieved economically, India experienced
nearly the opposite. After India gained independence from Great Britain, the people had a
difficult time getting on its feet economically. Ghandi’s started by implementing
economic policies that weakened and crippled the country while the population grew at a
dramatic rate. This led to grand-scale poverty and a weak standing in the world. It wasn’t
until Rajiv Ghandi became prime minister in 1985 when India began to change, which
ultimately led to an economic boom in 1991. There was positive change until 1996, when
a new party took office and since then, India has been struggling, particularly with
building appropriate infrastructure to accommodate its increasingly educated population.
Meredith puts it succinctly when she says that “Progress on India’s development projects
is on again, off again, as if ambivalent India still can’t decide whether it wants to be part
of the modern world” (53).
Despite China and India’s individual strengths and crippling weaknesses, they are
still the two countries that most threaten the United States, particularly its workforce.
China is providing the power of labor, India the power of the brains, and America is
failing to maintain its competitive advantage: creativity and innovation. Meredith
ultimately suggests that the United States “must strengthen its educational and economic
foundations and foster the innovation that will keep the United States ahead in they
technology that underpins so many parts of the nation’s culture and global economy”
(205).

Who the book serves

This book offers some startling insight through quotes, statistics and detailed stories of
the Chinese and Indians. The data and facts alone could have a huge impact on general
Americans, who get a striking glimpse at what their future holds. Furthermore, Meredith
takes a stab at U.S. policymakers for not encouraging the importance of education. As
Californians are seeing now, schools are taking the biggest cut and are being impacted
the most. More and more students are falling behind in academics and Meredith takes
notice of this and is practically screaming at policymakers to wake up and see that
education is the United State’s most valuable asset. Like Mr. Chen of Sybase says ‘ “Yes,
we have the best university system in the world, but we’re not feeding that system. We’re
not investing in creativity” ’ (206).
Most importantly, I think this book targets businesses in the United States that
seem to be accepting mediocrity as its way of doing business. Meredith exclaims that this
shouldn’t be the case and that businesses should focus on stimulating creativity,
innovation, and differentiation. Those are the United States’ strengths and they should be
exploited.

Strengths and Weaknesses

I think the greatest strength of this book is the data that Meredith supports herself with.
She is able to back herself up with facts rather than speculations, which validates her
points and insight. This also gave her quite a bit of credibility if her journalism
experience in Hong Kong was not enough. She managed to retain a relatively balanced
opinion throughout and gave a strong case for the evolution and expansion of China and
India.
Meredith also takes a different approach to her statements than Fareed Zakaria did
in his book The Post-American World. She used historical data to support her insight on
how China and India have achieved their success now, as well as her predictions for the
future. It was an effective way to create validity for her comments.
Also effective was her style of writing. She was a storyteller and made the all the
facts and statistics enjoyable to read. She didn’t completely lose the reader in numbers.
Overall, it was an enjoyable read.
I did not feel like there were too many weaknesses or contradictions in this book.
It was very strong literature backed up with legitimate facts and with the personal touch
of the anecdotes. I think Meredith could have speculated more on the future and
expanded on questions that she posed throughout the book. Other than that, the book’s
strengths by far outweigh its almost nonexistent weaknesses.

Comments

The only part of this book that I thought was inadequate was Meredith’s take on the
future. She does a great job focusing on the history of China and India and their strengths
and weaknesses, but she definitely could have expanded and elaborated on some of the
questions she posed in the book. For example, she could have speculated more on what
India must do to convince even the poorest people that change is possible with improved
infrastructure. She claims that they need to change, but does not offer any sort of opinion
on how or even if that change can occur, given the current political setbacks.
Despite the need for more elaboration, my only real criticism is not actually of the
book itself, but rather how outdated it has become today. The book was published in
2008 and most likely written well before then. It doesn’t quite encompass what has
happened in the United States in the last two years and how quickly the United States has
dug itself into an economic hole. Furthermore, it doesn’t examine the global recession
that has taken place since then and how China and India have still remained strong in
growth. Although Meredith makes some very accurate predictions including the recession
for the United States and its consequences, it’s not enough to truly cover the impact. This
is not an issue that I have with the author but I would suggest that she write a second
book that complements The Elephant and the Dragon.

Impressions

Overall, I would recommend The Elephant and the Dragon to other readers for the facts
and history. However, I would encourage people to pick up a book that incorporates the
recent events in the U.S. and the world. I would be interested to see if Meredith comes
out with another book or a supplement that takes these enormous economic changes into
account.