Fast Boat to China High-Tech Outsourcing and the Consequences of Free Trade: Lessons from Shanghai

Most Americans today are aware that jobs are being outsourced to China, India, and other nations at an alarming rate. From factory jobs to white-collar, high-tech positions, the exporting of labor is one of the most controversial issues in America. Yet few people know much about the other end about the people who are actually working these jobs and how their own lives have been throw into tumult by these new economic forces. Andrew Ross spent a year in China, interviewing local employees and their managers in Taiwan, Shanghai, and the far western provinces. In this engaging and informative book, he shows how the Chinese workforce has inherited many of the same worries as American workers, such as job instability, long hours, and awareness of their own expendability. He reports on the daily reality of corporate free trade and explores the growing competition between China and India. This is an eye-opening exploration of an unseen side of our globalized world.

Andrew Ross is Professor of American Studies and Director of the Metropolitan Studies Program at New York University. He is the author of seven books, including No–Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs; The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property Value in Disney’s New Town; and Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor. He has also edited six books, including No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade, and the Rights of Garment Workers and, most recently, Anti–Americanism. He lives in New York City.


From the Hardcover edition.