Within the Pandemic series - about coronavirus - they had author Rosemary Gibson, who I learned wrote a 2018 book called "China Rx" about the high proportion of drugs that either come from China or are synthesized from chemical backbones made in China. Similarly, this weekend Washington Post highlights the dependence of US hospital masks on China suppliers, in a WaPo article about the one remaining US mask manufacturer (here) - a topic featured a couple days earlier on Bannon.
The story of China monopolizing drug manufacturer and mask manufacturer reminded me of a much earlier book, "Germany's Master Plan: The Story of an Industrial Offensive," published in 1943 by Borkin and Welsh and with an introduction by Thurman Arnold.
Germany's Master Plan has slipped into the sands of history - it has one (and negative) review on Amazon. While that Amazon reviewer says that Borkin and Welsh published a "biased interpretation of the facts," surely a lot of the facts are real and for me it was a fascinating read.
Also, the point of the Borkin's book about German industry in the 1930s clearly has parallels to Gibson's main point about the Chinese pharma industry in the 2020's.
You can get second-hand copies of Germany's Master Plan for as little as $4 on Amazon. You can also find the whole text free online.
Some resources for Germany's Master Plan:
- $4 up on Amazon, here.
- Contemporary 1943 review at Foreign Affairs, here.
- (Access with contemporary subscription to Foreign Affairs.)
- Contemporary 1943 review at Journal of Political Economy, here.
- (View page 1 of a longer review.)
- Contemporary 1943 review at JAMA (!), paragraph review, here.
- Full free text in multiple formats at Archive.org here.
- Text, PDF, Kindle format, etc.
The brief reviewer at JAMA wrote,
Long before the beginning of World War II, German industry had been endeavoring to set up a system for worldwide control over electrical equipment, drugs, chemicals and basic war materials. Many of the facts regarding this system of control are here made available by writers who have been in intimate touch with the investigations on the subject. Joseph Borkin was for many years economic adviser to the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. Some of the facts regarding the relationship of the German drug industry to some portions of the American drug industry will come as revelations to American readers and indicate the need for control over international agreements of this type in the future.
