The Dragon in the Room: China & the Future of Latin American Industrialization by Kevin P. Gallagher and Roberto Porzecanski (review)

Book Reviews and material conditions to create the model workers (i.e., not indigenous) that would help usher in modern Peru (192). Drinot’s history is impressively detailed and complex, based on a close reading of archival sources, government publications, and Peru’s labor history, a nearly dormant field this book boldly reinvigorates. He pays close attention to how issues of gender and class influenced the nation’s racially biased history. This focus does not come without some hiccups: it is not made clear whom precisely the elite or the state considered an Indian, undeniably a contentious issue throughout Peruvian history. Likewise , Drinot focuses almost exclusively on Peru’s indigenous population, with the exception of a fascinating discussion of the omnipresent chifas (inexpensive Chinese food restaurants that competed with the state’s popular restaurants) in Chapter 5. Peru’s significant populations of people from Asian (primarily Chinese and Japanese immigrants) and African (primarily the descendants of former slaves) ancestry do not receive significant coverage. Greater consideration of these other minority groups might have provided a more complete vision of the state’s attempts to deracinate the working class in order to create a modern Peru. Aside from these minor critiques, The Allure of Labor is an extremely important book that should be read by anyone interested in labor history and the history of populism in the Americas, as well as the social and cultural history of Peru. Nathan Clarke Department of History Minnesota State University Moorhead THE DRAGON IN THE ROOM: CHINA & THE FUTURE OF LATIN AMERICAN INDUSTRIALIZATION. By Kevin P. Gallagher and Roberto Porzecanski. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010, 200 pp., $18.95. The Dragon in the Room provides an expansive analysis of the impact that China’s economic ascent is having on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and its implications for the future. The authors investigate the problem from several angles, focusing attention on three particular areas: (1) China’s bilateral economic relations with LAC, (2) the effects of China’s economic rise for LAC export markets, and (3) differing approaches to development adopted by China and LAC countries. Gallagher and Porzecanski conclude that China’s rise has both positive and negative implications for LAC countries. On the positive side, Chinese demand for LAC-produced goods is providing a boost for LAC export markets, as are the recent increases in commodity prices, which may be partly attributable to the increase in Chinese demand. On the negative side, Chinese exports are outcompeting LAC export markets across sectors and as such constitute a serious threat to LAC exporters now and in the future; moreover, Latin America and the Caribbean is becoming gradually more dependent 187 The Latin Americanist, June 2012 on primary commodity exports, a development that may induce “Dutch disease”—the so-called resource curse—in the future. The authors provide a well-sequenced investigation of the impacts on LAC-export markets that are accompanying China’s economic rise, in the process providing the reader with a progressively greater understanding of pertinent macroeconomic developments, as well as their many nuances. They begin with an analysis of bilateral trade between China and LAC, demonstrating that Chinese demand has stimulated LAC exports , while noting that demand has reached a few countries and involves only a handful of primary commodities within those countries. Gallagher and Porzecanski then argue that Chinese exports are out-competing their LAC counterparts in the global market, using export-structure comparison method and sector-by-sector comparison methods adopted from Lall and Weiss (2005) to demonstrate that Chinese exports are increasingly threatening to displace LAC manufacturing exports across sectors, both among importers in the United States and in LAC countries themselves. The outlook for LAC high-tech exports is particularly bleak, as the “competitiveness of LAC in high tech is stagnating or rapidly deteriorating for an overwhelming majority of high-tech products [. . .] in comparison with China’s impressive performance in the opposite direction” (58). Gallagher and Porzecanski next focus on the contrasting approaches to development that have been embraced by China and its LAC counterparts , arguing that China’s advantage is in large part a function of its “neodevelopmental” economic policy paradigm, which stands in contrast to the...