Export-management Books

I really enjoyed reading this book, I found it useful. It uses a practical approach to meetings and negotiations in China, I mean it not only says "do that" and "don't do that" like other books on etiquette but explains it with concret examples and situations, so one can prepare well on how to behave in certain situations.

I liked Chinese Business Etiquette: A Guide to Protocol, Manners, and Culture in the People's Republic of China a lot. I'm trying to get up speed real quickly on doing business in China. I think of it as a 1000 Mile journey. The first book The Gods of Business I read got me about 500 miles down the road real quick. It gave me the basics of the country's religion and their approach to business. After that I read this book and then read (Doing Business in China For Dummies (For Dummies (Business & Personal Finance))) each of which added another 250 miles of knowledge.

This book contains very useful information about Chinese Culture -- it's not at all just for business people, but for anyone who wants to understand the culture... or at least try to not stick their foot in their mouth when interacting with Chinese people.

Whenever I surprise my Chinese fiancee by knowing something about Chinese Culture (like the seating arrangements at a banquet), most of the time it was learned from this book. I can't rate it highly enough.

Haven't finished the book, yet. But so far, it seems to be worthwhile.

To be sure, with its rich Chinese cultural anecdotes and the author's vivid writing style, this book is not only useful in helping the reader understand unique Chinese concepts like Guanxi, Mianzi and Lijie but also an entertaining read - suitable for business travelers.

However, after reading Wei Wang's The China Executive, I realize that Seligman has not been right on "the single most important and fundamental difference between Chinese and Westerners". On pages 44-47 of Chinese Business Etiquette, Seligman says that this is the difference between the "individualism" of Westerners and the "group-centeredness" of the Chinese. (Of course, Seligman is not alone in getting this wrong; since the publication of Geert Hofstede's Culture's Consequences in 1980, this Western individualism-Chinese collectivism dichotomy has become the most widely-talked assumption in almost every book on China business including the authoritative Harvard Business Review on Doing Business in China).

To elaborate on Seligman (page 45), "[In China,] matters are often debated at great length until agreement is reached on a course of action. Once a decision has been made, however, individual group members are expected to fall in line, embrace it, and act on it, and nobody presumes to question it, at least overtly."

Now, the reality is that, with nearly a hundred million dollars invested in China, one of the biggest complaints our expats have against local staff is the latter's inability to follow a pre-agreed course of action or plan. In addition, the Chinese do not like group discussions, not to mention "debates at great length"; most of them like to remain quiet rather than actively voice their opinions. Also, if the Chinese were group-centered, their state-owned enterprises would have been so successful that multinationals have stood little chance to compete with them - but the very opposite is true (most state-owned enterprises cannot be closed down fast enough because they are "a pile of sand")!

According to Wei Wang in his book The China Executive, "group and individual are the two sides of the same coin; one cannot exist without the other", and therefore Westerners actually exhibit dual individualism-collectivism. And the heart of human relationships in China is human feelings. In other words, Chinese and Westerners do not represent two poles of the same individualism-collectivism continuum.

In addition, "there is a limit to learning the Chinese way," says Wang. "There are things that you need to go about the Chinese way but there are also things that you need to go about the Western way - otherwise, you lose the purpose of going there in the first place."

To understand why and, more important, its profound implications for China business or indeed business in the China era (including management, leadership, strategy and worldview), you have to read The China Executive.

Lindsey is a neo-conservative and this book represents a wide-ranging but finally unsatisfactory addition to the non-debate about globalisation. It divides the world into two groups - the free marketers, who are good, and the collectivists, who are anti-modern and the cause of most if not all the failings of the current highly imperfect free markets. Anyone who can lump George Soros' concept of the Open Society with collectivism, really has a bad dose of the current tendency to declare 'if you are not with us, you are against us'.

Read the book for a sometimes fascinating excursion into history, politics, the informal economy, the failings of collectivism and state control (but not the failings of the market), but do not expect to have much light cast on the underlying issues of wealth and poverty, sustainability and the proper place of money in judging the progress of society. Equally, do not expect to see useful engagement with the issue of the role of great international economic agencies (WTO, IMF, World Bank) and the processes by which nations, corporates and the common people influence their decisions.

Brink Lindsey is a fundamentalist. He believes that "free trade" will cure every problem in the world. And he believes that a lack of "free trade" is to blame for wars, poverty, and all other ills of humankind. Unfortunately, Lindsey seems to possess a childish understanding of "free trade," of world history, and of economics.

To take just one flaw, in a book filled with flaws... Rather than carefully examine the wholesale gutting of Russia, when free trade fanatics took over (in the early 1990s), and when the Russian economic nearly collapsed, industrial output plunged, corruption and crime roared, prostitution exploded, AIDS and drug epidemics devoured the nation, poverty is up exponentially--and Lindsey can only say that they didn't go far enough!

Three billion humans live on less than a dollar a day--and while 45 million human beings face death from AIDS, Lindsey offers them only the market. Most of them will die, while free marketeers talk of future salvation.

One need only read Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz's Globalization and its Discontents for a far more intelligent overview of capitalism today. Stiglitz, who is an ardent fan of capitalism, carefully disects the ways in which "free trade" is often anything but.

The problem with free market lunatics like Lindsey is that they fail to see the ways in which powerful nations and corporations bully the marketplace, control politics, and stack the deck in their favor. Just look at the cartels which control oil, fruit, cocoa, diamonds, automobiles, etc. They control prices, laws, wages, and politics around the globe. They profit from wars and from child labor. It takes either a fool or a free market fantasy to miss these basic problems with unregulated "free trade." Like all fundamentalists, Lindsey needs less faith and fervor and more critical analysis.

I bought this book to help in my research on a masters thesis...I think it is excellent. The book moves between (overly) scholarly erudition at times to almost poetic prose at others. You will defiantly feel where the action picks up and where it drops off...but it is understandable when you are trying to build a scholarly case on this subject.

Essentially he argues that liberalism (free markets, limited government, and individual rights) lost the battle in the 20th century, but had been on a decline since the late 1800s in some areas. The result was a century of warfare, massacres, and sustained poverty.

The scholarly work and assumptions made in this book are not the work of childish or child like intelligence. It is quite the opposite. Have you ever heard a free market advocate arguing "Look even a child understands it, it must be true!" Never, such are the arguments of communists and socialists. The real childish assumptions come overwhelmingly from the global left. The belief that poverty can be solved simply be re-distributing wealth shows painful ignorance of the economics involved. (though Lindsey is not hostile to "saftey nets"...I don't believe in the free market long run saftey nets will be needed at all...politically I recognize they would be necessary to get anything accomplished, but only if they are made more effecient like a negative tax proposed by Milton Friedman) Further ignorance is demonstrated through their assumptions that free markets exploit. Free markets are based on voluntary transactions, and as a voluntary transaction IT CANNOT BE EXPLOITIVE.

I agree with Lindsey that the leftist assumptions are the results of years of fallacious reasoning...intentionally or unintentionally; they are wrong on almost all accounts. I however find their love for their fellow human and desire to increase the welfare of society to be admirable, their solutions however are the causes to the problems they address. They don't understand history, politics, or economics. And they always blame the market for problems that the market often did not cause by conveniently forgetting or ignoring the government involvement in the creation of said problem (example, the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s...always blamed on free market capitalism when in fact fixed exchange rates, policies of the government not free trade, were a major cause of the crisis).

Current empirical evidence suggests, as Lindsey agrees, that economic freedom is strongly connected to civil and political freedom. That is, the more economically free a country is the more civil and political freedom the citizens enjoy...what we now call democracy is realized.

It is no coincidence that the forces who tried the hardest to suppress economic freedom also killed off vast portions of their populations...these are the Fascist and Communist governments that the Left have confused as polar opposites...they are not, both hate economic freedom and as a result both hate civil and political freedom.

Lindsey goes through great detail to list the conditions in the rise of liberalism and its decline. With the help of Hayek and Friedman he shows how government intervention and anti liberal policies helped bring about WWI, the great depression and WWII. The results of all of these were a belief that markets don't work and governments do. In the end, we live in a world that still fears globalization and free markets...a world that conflates free markets with mercantilism and continues to argue that free markets don't work in fact its their very own policy preferences that continue to cause global problems.

Example: protectionism (tariffs and quotas) protect the wealth of the first world capital owners at the expense of the first world consumers (who pay higher prices) and third world laborers (who have more difficulty finding employment) and third world capital owners (who find difficulty in creating and maintaining an export industry). PROTECTIONISM IS A WEALTH TRANSFER FROM POOR TO RICH, that ironically most leftists seem to accept ignorantly unaware that in no way are workers actually protected. Free trade is the opposite of this. Barriers are removed, jobs are created between both first and third world countries, trade ensues, both sides are lifted up through increasing prosperity and wealth creation.

Free markets are not the end all for the debate in this book. Lindsey recognizes that the forces that destroyed liberalism once before are still at work. Their arguments, assumptions, and ignorance still lives and has the potential to again mobilize a mass movement against liberalism...and ironically for totalitarianism. That being said, the summary of his book is that globalization and free markets are not inevitable nor invinsible.

No hard core leftist will read this book and suddenly be converted. They will likely throw confused fits of frustration and show little ability to counter the arguments found inside. Classic Liberals and those more favorable to the free market will find themselves with a highly compelling argument in this book that will strengthen their own understanding of globalization. Those who find themselves in the center will find a book that challenges many of the major assumptions that most of society accepts...it may leave you wondering exactly how you went through your entire education and were never presented with any of these arguments or facts.

But the sad state of public education is another book altogether... :P

Challenging the new consensus on globalization in this book, Brink Lindsey "portrays globalization as a kind of wholesome vacuum filler, the vacuum having been created by the loss of credibility and authority of statism and collectivism, the regnant economic and political doctrines in the world for most of the twentieth century. Near-universal statism, he maintains, choked off the naturally expansive impulses of capital, the precedent for which was the explosion of the world economy in the half-century or so before World War I. He claims that blame for the interwar implosion of the world economy lies with statism and collectivism. He sees the future as a struggle between forces of globalization -- a liberal world order, that is -- and the remnants of statism, giving the nod to liberalism in this contest because of its successful record in promoting economic welfare, in contrast to the proven failure of statism and collectivism."

"This book is a qualified success because of its fresh and carefully argued perspective on economic globalization," yet "certain aspects of Lindsey's economic history may not stand up to scrutiny."

"A methodological point of considerable significance is Lindsey's use of qualitative evidence to show that statism refuses to die and is defended everywhere by vested interests and laws that are difficult to change, making the struggle between the dead hand and the invisible one a momentous issue of our time. Although Lindsey is correct to assert that the dead hand remains with us, it is nonetheless difficult to form a clear picture of the extent, strength, or influence of the past from his discussion."

Thus, it would be helpful if Lindsey showed "more carefully than he does that free-market forces have the stronger hand to play. His argument in one brief -- indeed, cursory -- chapter is merely that no viable alternative to markets exists as a macroeconomic organizing principle, so that the triumph of liberalism sooner or later must arrive despite stubborn and effective resistance from the forces of the dead hand. This conclusion assumes a certain degree of rationality and pragmatism on the part of the world body politic that some...might not yet be willing to grant."

-From "The Independent Review," Spring 2003

I'm not surprised that preceding customer reviews are love-or-hate. Lindsey is a free-market advocate, trying to zap anything that remotely resembles marxist, top-down central planning. He clearly advocates a strong and responsible role for government, for important duties such as: protecting individual rights (including orderly transfers of property), centralized functions that cannot compete with market driven processes (e.g. defense), and providing economically sustainable safety nets for those who need help and care and have no resources.

It might be hard to see if Lindsey's heart is a youthful 16 or 20--he definitely doesn't come across as a socialist. But his principles have anecdotal, qualitative and quantitative truths from more than a century of history, so his brain is certainly working just fine. For example, Lindsey presents a compelling case on protectionism leading to trade wars and world war. His equating pay-as-you-go entitlement systems (legislated by leaders such as Bismarck, chiefly concerned with opiating the masses) with Ponzi or pyramid schemes (deemed illegal by the same governments) is unassailable.

If you care about shaping the socioeconomic world that our children and grandchildren will be inheriting, and if you are concerned about what fiction will be taught to them in most universities (e.g. liberally spun Keynesian economics, without contrasting neoclassical or monetarist economics, or even historical resultants of collectivist policies), this is a great book.

If you want to revisit the Dark Ages, then disparage this book and its commendable author.

Not only is this a great reference for "hidden oracle utilities" but since I work on different platforms, AIX and Windows, it helped a lot getting info needed and knowing which commands for the utilities I can execute exactly the same way on two different platforms.

I found this book to be a gold chest of useful tips and tricks to using the dozens of Oracle utilities and I even learned many new Oracle utilities that I had never used before that existed! It is great tool for when you need to perform an Oracle DBA task quickly and may not recall the exact syntax or method to use a particular utility such as export and import. Highly recommended!

Whether you are new to Oracle or a seasoned veteran, Moore's book provides insight into many useful Oracle utilities. This book covers a lot of material in a well organized manner. Many of the noteworthy topics are backed by effective examples (code / scripts) that the DBA/Developer can immediately start using. I felt there was good coverage on PL/SQL packages like dbms_alert, dbms_smtp, and dbms_profiler as well as the more popular utilities like SQL*Loader and Import/Export.

One concern with the book was the size of the font used in printing which I believe was far too large. The size of this book could have been reduced considerably using a smaller font.

I look forward to a second edition of this book from the author that covers newer utilities found in 10g.

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Jeffrey M. Hunter, OCP
Sr. Database Administrator
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FastReader from http://www.wisdomforce.com allow very quickly and efficiently extract, export, import, load, massage large volumes of data from Oracle tables to Oracle or others like DB2 or MySQL or SQL Server. So I only need now is FastReader User Guide. No need for "hidden" Oracle utils

The utilities explained in this book lack details. Which is a critical flaw for a book professesing to explain utilities. Virtually every utility explained in this book had to be researched further by me in the internet to gain a better understanding of when and how to use it, which, of course, defeated the purpose of me paying good money for this book.

One exception, TKPROF is explained beautifully and in detail. Otherwise, the real value of this book is the author's list of Oracle's most useful utilities.

Good book, very well written. As the writer explains, he described this business like "it is". He did a great job at covering the ins and outs of the business in great detail. Excellent for someone new to this that is trying to find out whether this is a suitable business idea or not.

Excellent book. Well organized, and well written. Lots of pointers to other resources as well. Some web links are broken.

Found this one to be well done, but a little more technical than I prefer. This book does include just about every bit of info you will need, from forms to products to making the right overseas and domestic connections. Also look at Import/Export: How to Get Started in International Trade.

This book is fine for the very early entrepreneur. There is an entire chapter on choosing between forms of organization, buying office supplies and creating a logo. It's a good birds-eye-view of the import/export process, however, if you are a professional seeking insights and business solutions, you will not find many new ideas here.

Well, where do I start? This book is useful to understand what every small time operator is doing in this business. You don't want to follow the crowd so I suggest you purchase this book and John Weiley Spiers Book "How Small Business Trades Worldwide". If you follow the techniques outlined by Weiss you're wasting your time, taking on too much risk, and making very little profits. I'm not saying you can't do it, for example, using trade bulletins to find buyers but so is everybody else! This is not an easy business if you do it this way. No real mention of the internet is made to make it useful nor does he focus too much on the marketing aspects which is the most important. Again, there are ways, and very few of them, to make some big profits. In a strange way, I am recommending this book so you understand what everybody else is doing to get into this business, and hopefully you don't follow. If someone is starting off in their own business, I highly recommend you start out as a Manufacturers representative and branch out as an importer/exporter as part of the overall business. [...]

All too often novices wanting to use R for an analysis never get to the analysis because they can't successfully import, clean-up and restructure their data for the analysis functions. This book prevents those problems by telling you the critical data and file manipulation materials that are usually briefly (and inadequately) covered in stat books. It is a short easy read that will give you the tools to get your data ready to go.

You can see the table of contents and read the other reviews but areas that really shine include: dealing with categorical (named or ordered) factor variables, recoding numeric data into categorical variables, and also making and working with summary tables.

When it comes to data manipulation and clean-up Spector has the best coverage of any book or web FAQ. This book is very expensive for its size but it is worth every cent.

This concise 150 page book contains a wealth of information, writen clearly and with many well-chosen examples. I liked it a lot. It covers reading and writing data in/out of the R workspace, including access to databases. The names of other chapters suggest the topics covered: "Dates", "Factors", "Subscripting", "Character manipulation", "Data aggregation", "Reshaping data".

This book will be helpful to any but the most absolutely new to R, and even the seasoned user will find interesting hints and examples. I cannot recommend it enough.

One minor qualm I have is the absence of references. Some topics (for instance, regular expressions) are fairly complex, and well documented elsewhere: a pointer or two would be helpful. Same with, for instance, SQL, which is mentioned and demonstrated briefly.

Another not-so-minor qualm is price. A book of this size from, for instance, Dover classics collection, with similar paper quality and covers, is about a third or fourth of the price. Although this is a new book I find the $54.95 tag (Amazon discounted price is about $44.50) fairly high. But this has nothing to do with the quality of the book, rather it has to do with the Springer pricing policies.

All in all, if you don't mind the price, this is a good buy.

Data manipulation can often take as long as or longer than the actual analysis. The ability to manipulate data is not emphasized enough. This book gives a great introduction to this skill set. It is clearly written and provides good examples.

The title of the book implied a lot and the book did not deliver. If the book had twice as many pages it would have come close to the title's promise because the author would have had enough space to cover the broad area of manipulation of data in R. I felt as if the author was forced to discuss a topic in as little space as possible. Some the discussions where cursory at best. There was just enough information to leave you wandering what could have been said to give the reader a more in depth understanding of the topic.

I think the author knows this material "like the back of his hand", but, he forgot that the readers do not.

This book along with Jim Albert's should be read by every statistician that does a lot of statistical computing. Both books help you learn R quickly and apply it to many important problems in research both applied and theoretical. Albert emphasizes applications in Bayesian statistics whereas Spector is teaching how to do data manipulation, things like merging and transposing data sets. These techniques can be easy to do in a language like SAS after a little training but in other programming languages it can be very difficult.

i got this book in good time and in good condition the seller wasalso amazinly curteous thank u

Great Book, information is updated on the 5th edition.. I personally use it for MY MBA.. there are a lot of books out there, the reason i bought this one is because i had to (PART OF MY MBA) none the less .. its a good textbook and a keeper

Book came in great time and was in the condition they said it was in. 5 stars.

Amazon shipped this item in a very thin bubble mailer -- new book was not shrinkwrapped, mailer was thin and beat up, and USPS *FOLDED* the book to stick in the mailbox rather than putting it in the package box or on doorstep. binding now has a crease in it that I would not consider "new" quality.

Poor shipping quality.

This was a text used in class, and while the teacher did mostly lecturing without the text, it was a great resource-easy to understand, and highly applicable. THe text does a great job of really explaining the material in a clear and concise manner.

I traveled to Mexico with Dr. Heusinkveld as a participant on one of her study abroad trips to the city where she wrote the book. I soon found out that not only is the book a must read for anyone interested in visiting or doing business in Mexico, but that the information that was published over 10 years ago is still very accurate in much of the country.

The book is a very easy read and not long at all. Its small size is very deceptive because the book is crammed with information that one should not go without.

Do not travel to Mexico without this book.

I love this book, as much for its conciseness and economy of words as well as all the sensitively considered advice and invaluable tips.
Though it is a deceptively thin book, it seems to touch on all areas of likely concern to one who visits or moves to Mexico. I wouldn't travel to Mexico without it, now.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED--should be required reading for every American so they have a better understanding of our neighbors to the south. I bought this when I first met my wife who is from Mexico. I found it very enlightening and worth every cent. It's easy to read since it is not in-depth, however, it is still very enlightening. It talks about real Mexico and real Mexicans--not the life and culture that surrounds resorts. It may need to be updated (10 years old) cause the youth in Mexico are greatly influenced by media (TV, movies, etc) today just as American youth are--however, it still provides great insight of where Mexicans are coming from.

I've read and re-read this short book, and it has helped me tremendously to understand Mexico and Mexicans. Their culture is different enough from ours that our habits don't always work.For example, in the chapter on manners, the author points out that people often thank shop clerks when leaving a store. I tried this on a recent trip and discovered that it could lead to enjoyable short conversations.

Published in 1994, I found it very timely in 2003.

...but if you know anything at all about the culture or have visited non-tourist spots you probably know a lot of this stuff already. I'm looking for something more in-depth, so I didn't find this book very helpful.

All cultures are unique, and it is often hard to understand the subtle and significant differences between ones own culture and others that are encountered through the business needs of today's global economy.

This book lays out the fundamental drivers of the Japanese culture in a way that is accessible to the American reader. It allows one to understand the motives behind Japanese business etiquette. Reading this book will shine a light on a culture that stands in vast contract to the American way of doing business. It will help the reader to navigate the river of Japanese business practices by understanding what lies underneath the surface.

This is one of the best books I have read on Japanese Business and Ethics. The author gives an explanation on the character of the japanese. Explains the differences between doing business the japanese way and the western way.The author gives a history of the japanese and gives stories on how the japanese think and act. You will gain so much knowledge from this book about the japanese. I will recommend this book to anyone that is going to do business in Japan or with the japanese in their own country. A must read.

Not only is the author knowledgable about the topic, but I like the manner in which he makes his points through real life anacdotes. I use the same technique in my book: The Constant-Sum Approach to Business Success".

Content: DeMente seems to know what he's talking about (this author was recommended to me by an instructor in Chinese culture). Although I've dealt with Japanese business people for many years, I've not been to Japan, and therefore have no basis to completely judge the book's content. Based on what I do know, though, this book is best read as instruction in how to deal with Japanese business people when doing business *in Japan* (as opposed to doing business with Japanese companies and their representatives in the U.S.).

Structure: Overly repetitive, poorly structured and in some places, clearly outdated. The last criticism is to be expected given the dramatic change of status Japan has undergone in the past decade. The first two criticisms might be ameliorated by two factors: One, my own preferences are certainly playing a large role here. I prefer to have information delivered in a logical (to me) and concise manner. This is especially true for an instructive book -- one would expect creative writing to contain flourishes. Two, perhaps this *is* creative writing, and DeMente is showing the reader what dealing with a Japanese mindset is really like.

Superficially, Japan and the US are quite similar: In their cities, there are tall modern buildings, well dressed people hurrying to appointments while talking on cellular phones as well as the hustle and bustle of any large Western city. These similarities will seduce nearly every American who seeks to do business in Japan into thinking that the business practices of the country will be the same as in the US. The truth is that the cultural differences are so vast and subtle that they are often beyond the comprehension of the majority Americans. In Japan, there is a high expectation of a certain standard of business etiquette and failure to achieve this standard could doom any hopes of doing business in that country. And, unfortunately, many Americans, unknowingly, are unable to avoid this pitfall. The Japanese language is rich with expressions that conceptualize certain feelings or attitudes that are literally very foreign to Westerners but are key to the Japanese way of seeing things. De Mente's explanations of these phrases and sayings are both useful vocabulary lessons as well as effective insights into the Japanese business mentality. When my friends ask me for advice on conducting business in Japan, I regularly refer them to this book for a quick heads-up on business etiquette and ethics prior to their visit. Without exception, everyone reported that the book gave them the additional perception and savvy that was especially helpful in understanding and dealing with their Japanese counterparts. In addition to giving basic insight on the how-to's of doing business in Japan, De Mente's book could a valuable primer for our diplomats and trade representatives who seek to improve relations with our important Asian neighbor. I have read many books on this topic and have found none to have the depth and the richness as this one. After reading this book, one will naturally seek additional information in De Mente's many other books on this subject. Even if you are able to afford a cultural consultant to dispense expensive advice you will find Japanese Etiquette and Ethics in Business to be a thoughtfully written handbook that gives much insight into the ways of doing business in that country.

This book is a bit unfocused, but even its tangents are interesting. You get a few pages here on Chinese history, a few pages there of polemic about rich nations' unfair trading practices, here a digression, there a ramble. It's not completely about China and it's not completely about the WTO, though those bases are covered, and the other subjects it touches upon - including Asian regional economics - add to its value. The authors put both sides of the debate over trade in reasonably fair focus. We confirm that what they say about China, while not new, merits mulling over by anyone affected by globalization.

This book is a bit unfocused, but even its tangents are interesting. You get a few pages here on Chinese history, a few pages there of polemic about rich nations' unfair trading practices, here a digression, there a ramble. It's not completely about China and it's not completely about the WTO, though those bases are covered, and the other subjects it touches upon - including Asian regional economics - add to its value. The authors put both sides of the debate over trade in reasonably fair focus. We confirm that what they say about China, while not new, merits mulling over by anyone affected by globalization.

I'm a Vietnamese student in Boston-USA, I have been haunted by the quest of knowing more of the impacts on the southeast asia region once China entered the WTO. I hoped to predict what would happen in Vietnam once it enters the WTO because VN is likely to follow China's track and how she would deal with it. And this book says it all, it helps me so much in looking for the near future of VN, and what sector of VN needs to be fortified to be ready for the economic fight in the globalization process.

This is a well-written book with illustrations and proofs of points. The authors are well-respected in the economics community, as one of them will be the WTO Director General in Sep, 2002, and the other is the Regional Editor for BusinessWeek.

The economic impact of China accession is so profound that the book shouldn't be overlooked. This book will help you see the conflicting aspects of state-owned and private-held enterprises in China and the prospect of continuing administrative and economic reforms through the binding of WTO trade laws.

I gave the book 5 stars because it deserves to be the best.

In December 2001, China agreed to join the World Trade Organization. According to projections, economic reforms undertaken since 1978 will help China to increase its GDP to $2.2 trillion by 2010, standing behind the United States, Japan and Germany. This progress raises many serious questions for its internal transformation and her role in the global economy.
The book considers carefully the economic, social and political consequences of this event. The phenomenal success of recent economic growth is attributed to high savings rates, protective laws and strong and effective government policies. However, the great challenges facing China to become a truly modern state are institutional reforms for sustained economic growth.
Based on the World Bank's projections, China would become the world's second largest economy in 2020 with 8% of global output, trailing the United States with a 19% share. If this happens, China's skilled workers would also see the world's highest wage gains, nearly a double increase! Consequently, the great challenge China's government and the World Trade Organization will face is to make sure that all levels of society receive a fair share of its economic growth.
Supachai Panitchpakdi and Mark Clifford correctly believe that globalization and trade promoted by the WTO for all nations, many of which are small, are equally important for China as well. Numerous studies indicate that there is a strong correlation between free trade and growth. Finally, it should be recognized, that China's entry into the WTO will dramatically raise the stakes for its Asian neighbors and rivals. It would attract more foreign investment followed by a higher sustained rate of growth and in turn would increase international trade and development and help other countries to develop their economies as well.

One will be able to peruse this work in an hour or so. Gives good working knowledge of Vietnamese ettiquette and mind-set. Great to have on hand as a reminder of what Vietnamese clients or students will expect from you. Generally accurate. Made me long for the days that I was fortunate enough to teach English to students from Viet Nam.

This is a quick, easy read for anyone who wants an introduction to Vietnamese culture, particularly business culture. The clip art in the book looks cheap and the authors could have used tone marks in the Vietnamese vocabulary section. (Vietnamese is a tonal language and using different tones changes the meaning of words.) But, overall it is a useful book for anyone planning a personal or business trip to Vietnam.

This is one of the two books I read in preparing for a 3 week stay in Vietnam. The content was right on the mark, and helpful for even this non-business traveler.

Since Vietnam has opened its doors to the West, many business are moving their production sites and facilities to this fascinating country. If you happen to be a businessperson in this situation or just a tourist, this book will help you understand your hosts mentality and their way of life. A "Must Read" before you leave, if you do not have a lot of time to read other books which go much more in-depth on the subject.