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Minority rule, majority
hate
World on Fire by
Amy Chua
Review by Sreeram Chaulia
 Can two seemingly
unrelated issues like globalization and violent
ethnonationalism actually have a priori linkages? Yale
University professor Amy Chua's new book takes the
globalization debate into uncharted territory via myriad
comparative examples to show the explosive collision
between free market democracy and ethnic hatred.
Chua begins with the murder of her Chinese
Filipina aunt in Manila, an expression of the extreme
frustration and anger of the indigenous majority towards
Chinese "outsiders" who dominate key sectors of the
Philippines' increasingly globalized economy. Plutocrats
of Chinese descent, whose fortunes have ballooned due to
free market economic policies, appear "to the vast
majority of Filipinos as exploiters, as foreign
intruders, their wealth inexplicable, their superiority
intolerable". (p 4) The same story is being replayed in
many other parts of Southeast Asia.
In Burma's
new liberalized economy, Sino-Burmese minorities have
been transformed into a garishly prosperous business
community that monopolizes the gem, teak wood and light
consumer industries. "Today, ordinary Burmans speak of
'the Chinese invasion' or 'recolonization by the
Chinese'." Vietnam's post-1988 pro-market reforms have
also marked the resurgence of Chinese commercial
dominance at the expense of the impoverished locals.
Here too, there is a bitter outcry against "the Chinese
stranglehold".
In Thailand, all but three of the
most powerful business groups are owned by Thai Chinese.
In Malaysia, Chinese minorities comprise a third of the
population but account for 70 percent of the country's
market capitalization. In Indonesia, which has witnessed
bloody anti-Chinese riots, the 3 percent Chinese
minority controls 70 percent of the private economy.
Throughout the region, "there festers among the
indigenous majorities deep anti-Chinese resentment,
rooted not just in poverty but feelings of envy,
insecurity and exploitation". (p 47)
Moving to
South America, Chua finds the same pattern of a
"market-dominant minority" from outside grabbing the
lion's portion of globalization's benefits and stoking
ethnonationalist fires. Bolivia's Amerindian majority is
largely excluded from the modern economy, while the
white capitalists originating from Europe and North
America own the most valuable natural resources and the
most advanced economic sectors. "Global markets have
intensified the economic dominance of Bolivia's white
elite over the country's growth-stunted, impoverished
indigenous majority." (p 56) In Peru, Guatemala and
Ecuador too, Amerindians represent a mass underclass
being bossed around by the light-skinned rich. All of
Mexico's lucrative corporate sectors are concentrated in
the exclusive hands of a small clubby white
market-dominant minority. The latifundia feudal land
ownership system, dominated by Spanish-blooded families,
is booming further with each new round of
pro-globalization reforms.
Other outsider
minorities making hay under the neo-liberal economic
order in Latin America include Lebanese, Jewish and
Palestinian businessmen, who corner enormous profits in
Brazil, Panama, Argentina, Belize and Honduras. All over
the region, traditionally soft in ethnic identity
assertion, "distinctively ethnic resentment against
market-dominant light-skinned elites is on the rise." (p
73)
In post-Communist Russia, six out of the
seven wealthiest and most powerful oligarchs, wielding
mind-boggling political and economic leverage, are
Jewish. Owing to the virulent history of Russian
anti-Semitism, this racial profile of the nouveau riche
has not gone unnoticed. How, it is being asked on the
streets, did members of a minuscule "outsider" ethnic
minority come to wield unimaginable might since 1991?
Chua notes that political anti-Semitism is on the rise,
as a majority of ordinary Russians believe "they have
been impoverished at the expense of rich Jews."
References to "Zioncrats" and "bloodsucking Yids" who
hijacked privatization and stole the wealth of the
Russian people are commonplace.
In southern
Africa, English-speaking whites, thanks to the
gargantuan head start of colonialism, lord over
lucrative industries like gold, platinum, diamond
mining, finance, insurance and technology. Namibia,
Zimbabwe and South Africa have market-dominant white
minorities that are stretching this historical lead
longer due to laissez-faire market conditions. Kenya has
an inordinately prosperous, disproportionately skilled
white minority that cavorts in colonial fashion in
country clubs and golf courses, while the 31 million
blacks survive on less than two dollars per day.
Indigenous Kenyan market-dominant minorities, the
Kikuyu, are seen by the toilers as accomplices of these
white "rulers". Nigeria's Ibo community is another
indigenous market-dominant minority that dominates key
sectors and is enriching itself in the globalized
economy due to its long experience of manipulating
markets. The Bamileke of Cameroon and the Susu of Guinea
are other indigenous minorities subject to widespread
resentment by the masses.
Besides whites, the
other non-indigenous market dominant minorities in
Africa are Indian and Lebanese merchants. Indian
Kenyans, less than 2 percent of the population, "benefit
extremely disproportionately from globalization and
market liberalization because of their international
connections" and access to capital. (p 113) Lebanese
market dominance in Sierra Leone, Gambia, Cote d'Ivoire,
Benin, Ghana and Liberia is astounding, encompassing
fields like diamonds and gold, finance, retail,
construction and real estate. Lebanese entrepreneurs,
together with a handful of native politicians and
foreign investors, are the principal beneficiaries of
globalization in West Africa.
Chua's second part
of the thesis relates to raw majoritarian democracy
which, when added to markets, cooks a recipe for
upheaval and ethnic conflagration. "As markets enrich
the market-dominant minority, democratization increases
the political voice and power of the frustrated
majority." (p 124) The violence directed at Zimbabwe's
white farmers and their black farmhands is "an anarchy
born of democracy", ie Robert Mugabe's vote hankering
and reduction of democracy to bare minimum electoral
connotation.
Nationalization of "foreign-owned
property" is the result of this sort of lopsided
democracy that is being imposed on the third world.
Confiscations and expropriations in developing countries
have explicitly and exclusively targeted assets and
industries of the hated market-dominant minorities,
giving an outlet to the popular frustration and
vengeance demanded by the majority population.
Demagogues promising to restore the honor and
possessions of the majority are supported with wild
enthusiasm, be it in post-Suharto Indonesia, which
embarked on an anti-Chinese business pogrom, or Putin's
Russia, which is turning on Jewish media moguls. Hugo
Chavez came to power in Venezuela by attacking "rotten
white elites", and the mysterious right-wing coup
against him in April 2002 failed because the new
leadership excluded the Pardos majority from power
entirely.
To preempt confiscations,
market-dominant minorities sometimes enter into
symbiotic alliances with corrupt indigenous politicians,
better known as crony capitalism. Sierra Leone under
Siaka Stevens saw Lebanese magnate Jamil Mohammed become
a shadow "co-president", with "global markets generally
approving of these arrangements". (p 150) Kenya's Daniel
Arap Moi concluded a network of deals with a coterie of
Indian businessmen in 1978. Suharto's Chinese-friendly
autocracy in Indonesia was similarly a backlash by
market-dominant minorities after Sukarno's
nationalizations. Marcos' crony capitalist empire with
the Chinese business community in Philippines was a
payback for Ramon Magsaysay's anti-Chinese drive of the
fifties. Some market-dominant minorities do not rest at
crony capitalism or rent seeking and seize power
directly. Apartheid South Africa and the whole of Latin
America bear testimony.
The most horrific
outcome of free market democracy in the face of a
market-dominant minority is government-sponsored
attempts to "cleanse" the outsiders. Non-Russian former
Soviet Republics cleansed and drove out 2 million ethnic
Russians after 1991. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus upped
anti-Jewish violence and expelled nearly 1 million
"shylocks" in 1999. Ethiopia deported 50,000
Eritrean-Ethiopians who used to dominate commerce in the
last few years. An estimated 110,000 Chinese families
fled Indonesia around the same period. Hutu Power
advocates in Rwanda called for "majority rule" and
"democratic revolution," only to mastermind a
bloodcurdling genocide against Tutsi "invaders" in 1994.
In the Balkans, Croat and Slovene minorities that were
disproportionately prosperous vis-a-vis the more
populous Serbs faced the deadly fate of mass expulsions
and genocidal violence.
Extending the theory of
market-dominant minorities beyond the confines of the
nation-state, Chua argues that in the Middle East as a
region, "globalization has wildly disproportionately
benefited an 'outsider'- Israeli Jews - fuelling ethnic
resentment and hatred among a massive Arab population
that considers itself the 'indigenous' true owner of the
land". (p 211) Besides cultural and historical enmities,
the Middle East is a conflict between 221 million,
largely poor Arabs, against Israel's starkly prosperous
5.2 million Jews. Arab squalor and mass frustration runs
headlong into Israel's highly educated, skilled and
Westernized Jews. That is why "one often hears
half-admiring, half-contemptuous grumblings about Jewish
wealth, greed and moneymaking tendencies" among common
Arabs. (p 222) Rapid democratization of the Arab states,
being pushed by the US government as a cure-all, will
exacerbate ethnonationalist hatred for the
market-dominant Jews and fuel even greater bloodshed.
Chua's piece de resistance is the idea
that "America today has become the world's
market-dominant minority." The principal beneficiary of
globalization and spread of free markets, the United
States, has attained heights of global economic power
that are wildly disproportionate to its tiny numbers.
"Our extraordinary market dominance, our global
invincibility have earned the envy, fear and resentment
of much of the rest of the world." (p 231) American
products, companies, investors, entertainment, cuisine
and culture are viewed as "outsider" threats to
legitimate "indigenous" society all over the third
world. Anti-Americanism is a form of "frustration
heightened by access to images and information about how
much better Americans live"/ (p 246) Anti-American
investor confiscations and expulsions have occurred in
Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay before the era of
globalization, but countries daring to expropriate
American property today risk serious consequences, a
fact that heightens suppressed fury. The September 11,
2001 terror attacks, reminds Chua, prompted "momentary
jubilation of millions of poor and exploited people
around the world", not just in Muslim countries. It was
a reflection of the crushing humiliation perceived to be
inflicted by the US on the Third World.
Chua
concludes with recommendations to prevent ethnic hatred
from devouring the globalizing South. Educational reform
and equalization of opportunities for poor
indigenous-blooded majorities are imperative. Strong
redistributive measures - progressive taxation, social
security, unemployment insurance, antitrust regulation,
affirmative action, dispersed capital market ownership -
need to be implemented in Asia, Africa and South
America. The precedent of Malaysian Prime Minister
Mahathir Mohamad's ethnic quotas for bumiputra Malays
could be worth emulating. Market-dominant minorities
themselves should eliminate corrupt and illicit business
practices that enrage the majority community, and invest
in the local economies in which they thrive. Corporate
responsibility by Indian firms in East Africa and Roman
Abramovich in Russia are current instances of softening
the ethnic fault lines that have been opened by global
markets.
Washington "should not promote
unrestrained, overnight majority rule" by shipping out
ballot boxes for national elections in countries that
have market-dominant minority problems. It must also
improve its dismal foreign aid record (the US has the
lowest aid budget among advanced economies, viz 0.1
percent of GDP). Chua fails to add that the vice-like
grip of the United States on global financial
institutions is a major source of anti-Americanism that
also needs restructuring.
For those countries
that ill-fit her model, Chua has an escape clause
disclaimer to the thesis that free market democracy, as
is being vigorously exported by globalization advocates,
aggravates ethnic imbalances and distrust in the
developing world. "This book is not proposing a
universal theory applicable to every developing
country." (p 15) She cautions against misappropriating
her thesis to cases that are exceptions and outliers. As
a result, she leaves scant room for disagreement or
criticism.
Marxists will dislike this book since
it complicates the simplistic class struggle blueprint
by introducing the ethnicity card. Thomas Friedman and
other globalization honchos will also dislike it for
questioning their core tenets of "trickle down effect"
and "lifting all boats". For those not married to
ideology, Chua's sui generis theory will make a lot of
sense.
World on Fire: How exporting free
market democracy breeds ethnic hatred and global
instability by Amy Chua, Doubleday, New
York, 2003. ISBN: 0-385-50302-4. Price: US$26. 340 Pages
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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