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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 [email protected]
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