Carjacking, kidnapping, and extortion rings have proliferated. One syndicate, for instance, may steal a car in the United States and then ship it to China to be sold. Chinese, like any other group, have harnessed multiple ways to exploit this recent economic development. Cheng warned, in the end, that as global capitalism progresses, it creates opportunity for some and disaster for others. Participating societies are increasingly polarized into the super rich and the devastatingly poor.
China is a prime example.
While capital is spawning networks, other groups are aligning against its effects by making their networks. Nongovernmental organizations and labor unions are creating even more bridges across the Pacific, so that in a few years when business executives are looking for cheap Chinese labor, they may be in for a surprise. Transnational Chinese Americans are not only advancing global capitalism, they are working to resist its expansion. Cheng posed the challenge to Asian Americans to decide which bridges they want to build. The panelists provided a sobering view of what a fully developed global economy might engender.