Information Battlespace II: Executive Ability and the Management of Barbarism

From a Believer article by the incomparable Paul Collins:

Perhaps emboldened by their success [creating fake Harry Potter sequels]...Chinese publishers have gone on to promote entirely fictitious Western authors. One best-selling classic of business advice, Paul Thomas’s Executive Ability, is a five-volume work in Chinese by a Duke University business professor who does not, in fact, exist. Yet a very real Chinese business scholar, Yu Shiwei, has also found himself confronted with books he never wrote. Los Angeles Times reporter Don Lee noted in 2005 that after a lecture in Shanghai, Shiwei was accosted by an eager autograph seeker bearing ten copies of “his” book Ying Zai Zhi Xing (“Execution Wins”). Shiwei, not wanting to disappoint his fan, graciously signed them without a word.

The L.A. Times article that Collins draws on (reprinted in a Hong Kong paper) offers deeper insight:

Although bogus books are not confined to business topics, they are particularly prevalent in that field, largely because most management volumes are translated and are in high demand. ... "There are [bogus] recommendations from Bill Gates, The New York Times or even Einstein, which is really ridiculous,'' said Jiang Ruxiang, general manager of Beijing Zion Consulting ...

"The most harmful influence of these books is that a large number of China's best entrepreneurs are learning wrong and misleading management principles,'' he said. ...

"We lack the experience to distinguish these new fake books,'' said China Chang An Publishing House vice president Chen Xiaojun.

"[Executive Ability is] a nice book,'' said Wang [Zhe], who finished Volume 2 of the series in two weeks. He was hard-pressed to explain details of the 256-page book but said the overall point was that successful managers pay attention to details.

A strange phenomenon, no? How could so many people in an economy so successful be so gullible? Quite suspicious, especially when you recall the following tips from everyone's favorite jihadi guidebook, The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage through Which the Umma Will Pass (PDF, 2004):

We must make use of books on the subject of administration, especially the management studies and theories which have been recently published, since they are consonant with the nature of modern societies. There is more than one site on the internet in which one can obtain management books [including] ... the site Mufakkirat al-Islam (The Notebook of Islam) ... Moreover, it is possible to obtain more management books and resources from other sites on the Internet or from libraries and publishing houses, keeping in mind that we must undertake practical application when study of them is complete so that we may see the administrative styles (positively) influence the work [i.e. jihad].

In short, the Chinese government is secretly collaborating with U.S. covert operations to undermine Islamic terrorists by giving them an inaccurate understanding of modern management techniques. Why else do you think 9/11 hasn't been repeated? Let's just pray that they never master GTD.