The Elephant And The Dragon Summary

In, The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us author Robyn Meredith gives a non-partisan review of the tremendous growth of India and China. Meredith goes through the economic, political, and cultural factors that contributed to these countries seemingly “overnight” growth in the first chapters of the book and concludes with how the United States should react to the growth of India and China. Meredith argues that the United States shouldn’t fear these countries or be protectionists, rather they should be proactive in job creation and improving the overall economic structure in the United States. Both India and China were closed, underdeveloped economies. Now with booming economies both made a dramatic change. China opened up its economy and took the steps necessary before India. This has caused China to be a step ahead of India by thirteen years in the development as a nation and this is still seen today. China was destroyed as a nation by communism in a thirty-year period with his “Great Leap Forward” program. Mao caused a thirty-year famine because of the decrease in agriculture when farmers were forced to give up land. With the death of

The book speaks on how Mao’s Great Leap Forward lead to starvation and cannibalism and how collective farming would not be an efficient policy. It explains how government-planned economy resulted in a large financial hole that China stayed in for years. The BBC completely supports the message in the book, “The result, instead, was a massive decline in agricultural output, which, together with poor harvests, led to famine and the deaths of millions.” The BBC also agrees with the human and cultural toll in result of Mao starting the Cultural Revolution, and how that it crippled