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Zusatztext 41133130 Informationen zum Autor Amy Chua Klappentext The reigning consensus holds that the combination of free markets and democracy would transform the third world and sweep away the ethnic hatred and religious zealotry associated with underdevelopment. In this revelatory investigation of the true impact of globalization, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua explains why many developing countries are in fact consumed by ethnic violence after adopting free market democracy. Chua shows how in non-Western countries around the globe, free markets have concentrated starkly disproportionate wealth in the hands of a resented ethnic minority. These "market-dominant minorities" - Chinese in Southeast Asia, Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, whites in Latin America and South Africa, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews in post-communist Russia - become objects of violent hatred. At the same time, democracy empowers the impoverished majority, unleashing ethnic demagoguery, confiscation, and sometimes genocidal revenge. She also argues that the United States has become the world's most visible market-dominant minority, a fact that helps explain the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. Chua is a friend of globalization, but she urges us to find ways to spread its benefits and curb its most destructive aspects. Leseprobe CHAPTER 1 Rubies and Rice Paddies Chinese Minority Dominance in Southeast Asia In Burma,* tattoos are traditionally used to protect against snakebite. In 1930 and again in 1938, enraged Burmans applied these tattoos to achieve invulnerability against bullets and then proceeded to slaughter Indians in an orgy of violence. Even monks were said to have participated. At the time, Indians, along with British colonialists, were a starkly economically dominant ethnic minority in Burma and the object of mass antipathy. Killing Indians was an act simultaneously of revenge and nationalist pride among a long-downtrodden people. As a contemporary observer put it, "The average Burman on the street felt that at least once he had proved his superiority over the Indian." Today there is only a small community of Indians left in Burma. Hundreds of thousands fled in the sixties, in response to another wave of ethnic violence. But a new market-dominant minority has taken their place, far wealthier than the Indians ever were. Markets, Junta Style, and the Chinese Takeover Burma has one of the most repugnant military governments in the world--the State Law and Order Restoration Council, or SLORC,** which seized power in September 1988 after gunning down thousands of unarmed demonstrators. SLORC held multiparty elections in 1990, but then refused to honor the landslide victory of 1991 Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, placing her instead under house arrest and earning the widespread hatred of the Burmese people. From its inception, SLORC has been aggressively pro-market. Reversing three decades of disastrous, socialist central planning, SLORC in 1989 launched "the Burmese way to capitalism." Apart from enriching corrupt SLORC generals, who are all ethnic Burmans, the ensuing decade of marketization brought virtually no benefits to the indigenous population, the vast majority of whom still engage in traditional agriculture. One group, however, has benefited tremendously. Since Burma's shift to a market-oriented, open-door economy, both Rangoon, the modern capital, and Mandalay, the ancient City of Gems and royal seat of the last two Burmese kings, have been taken over by ethnic Chinese. Some of these Chinese are from families that have lived in Burma for generations. Like the Indians but to a lesser extent, the Chinese were disproportionately wealthy during the colonial period (1886-1948), which was characterized by essential...
