My review of Paul Midler’s POORLY MADE IN CHINA

arrives well after the majority of critical and supportive reviews have already appeared at this site, and I admit in advance that much of what I’m about to say has been influenced by the discussions I’ve held at Facebook (/gtowna), Twitter, and of course from what I’ve read here. Without going too deeply into a review of the book’s blow-by-blow contents, the likes of which have already been capably done by my peers here, I’d like the focus of my review to be on the following: the book indeed supplies a ready-ground for further discussion on the topic of the Chinese manufacturing industry in a fulsome manner.

Critics of Mr. Midler’s work have abounded — the majority of the them ranging from his unfair attribution of blame squarely and solely upon the shoulders of Guangdong’s small factories, while less of his bromide focusses on the foreign businessmen and women who engage said factories in the oftentimes dirty work of making stuff in China. If it wasn’t for the fact that our author is a recognized Old China Hand with the linguistic skills and impeccable professional credentials and track record to match, one might think that Midler has sort of axe to grind. Naturally, this falls by the wayside and easily dissolves when one realizes that the agency game is the very income which puts the proverbial bread on Mr. Midler’s dinner table.

The book has strengths and weaknesses, to be sure. Among the narrative’s strengths are (as cited by other reviewers here) the accessibility of the prose, given how it wasn’t loaded up with industry-specific jargon and — ugh! — statistics which aim to factually support the author’s contention. Another is the occasional asides Midler intersperses between the major sections, which not only brakes up the potential monotony of overall factory-speak, but which demonstrates, at least to this reviewer, that Mr. Midler is less agenda-less than might be initially imagined, given the title of this work. Its thinness was also a welcome item. Midler’s contention is driven home resoundingly well, with the major takeaway, at least for me, being that doing business in China — as in any foreign market — is a treacherous path hardly for the meek. Those without a penchant for the smell of napalm in the morning and gunpowder might wish to think twice about investing their capital in the Chinese market, given how potentially quixotic — given the experience of some of the author’s clients — the market can be. It’s more than just caveat emptor — buyer beware — in China’s Factory Towns. It’s that not being fully apprised of this reality well in advance is somthing expatriate businessmen will feel at their peril.

On the weakness side of things — which other reviewers have noted and which I fully subscribe to — is the fact that Midler doesn’t cast his net as widely as he perhaps should. He milks the Johnson Carter/King Chemical debacle to the hilt and supplies little in the way of comparative case study analysis other than the occasional peppering in of an anecdote or two from similar-scripted incidents with some of his other clients, or those of his professional colleagues, and this is likely the reason some have accused him of having something of an agenda. Also, Midler’s personal biases trickle into the story which other than revealing Midler’s position on certain things — likely the reason for editorial left them in the final galleys — are sometimes mildly offputting and wondering why his censure didn’t extend to other so-called “ethnic” groups who are readily present in the Chinese foreign business community which yet don’t receive similar extended treatment. I refer to the two cases of Jewish businessmen — both Johnson Carter’s idiosyncratic Bernie (at least as Midler paints him) and then the family of Belgian diamond merchants — as ready examples. Why should Bernie’s habit of covering his head to recite a thanksgiving blessing after a lavatory visit be any different than tossing “chance sticks” in a Buddhist temple? Where is the equivalence?

While others might find it entertaining and instructive, I did get “emotionally-involved” at certain stages of the story given how this happens to people with less ambitious China plans who are just looking to achieve a measure of increased profitability given the globalized context of how business works in this day and age. People have also criticized Mr. Midler for taking a political stance on the PRC, but I know this only too well from my expatriate existence that after living for a significant period of time in a foreign nation and having learned the nuances of its language and culture, a transferrence should ideally occur at a certain stage with the host country eventually accepting the erstwhile “guest” as one of their own. While Midler recounts the single case of his Chinese airline seat companion assuring him that despite Midler decade and a half of residence in China the latter can hardly be counted as a local, it makes one wonder whether this opinion is more widely held across a broader spectrum of the Chinese collective. Given that I don’t live in the PRC, I myself would be hardpressed to challenge this but I’d like to hear from others more qualified to do so.

All in all, however, I relished this read and like most of the reviewers have said themselves, I blew through it eagerly and nearly in one sitting and Midler’s message was tremendously well-articulated and his writing style can be best described as fun.

This was a business book which didn’t have that business book-y look and feel, for that — given how many of the latter I read — I was most grateful.

Five stars.

–Adam Daniel Mezei

ps Paul Midler’s website can be found here.

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