Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Made in Chinatown

How often do you come across a product which says "Made in China" and think, "man, this is a cheap piece of crap", even when it isn't? Well, you've been made to think that way. This is the work of the U.S. government and various other governments around the world, who construct cheap, flimsy products which make China's actual products look bad. And then what do they do? They mark them as "Made in China".

Right now, you're probably thinking, "man, American's don't make crap products, they make good quality American products." Sorry, but you're wrong. Take, for example, a Ford. My dad actually worked at a Ford dealership, and when the cars came in for their 10,000km checkup, there were many little things wrong with them. Yes, bits were falling off left-right-and-centre. So much for high-quality American products. While these weren't necessarily American models, it was the standard GM practice: to put old components in their cars. So, I have proven that Americans can make bad products.

In the earlier days, Chinese exports were reasonably good and reliable. So vendors decided to outsource their products. This was back in the days when Japanese products were known as "jap crap". And why? They did the exact same thing. As you should know, Japanese products tend to be incredibly reliable. Back then, however, they were making flimsy products and selling them as "Made in Japan". You could ask your government about this, but they won't tell you about it.

Why? So they can raise their prices for their products.

If they can successfully degrade Chinese importing, then they can say "hey look, we made this in [INSERT COUNTRY HERE]", and charge you through the teeth, while the odds of getting an authentic Chinese product is about 40 to 1.

So what about those who label things as "Designed in U.S.A", but actually made in China? Or "Made in P.R.C."? This is an effort for Chinese manufacturers to work around the distasteful labels applied to their products. They send someone on a business trip to America primarily so they can design it there, then they move back to China.

This isn't the only country targeted with this market control. While most "dodgy" countries have the "child labour" label on them, an attempt to create low-grade goods marked as "Made in India" is currently underway.

No comments:

Post a Comment