"Made in China"

[jwinslow]

China Is Cloning This Entire European City

Not happy with cloning watches, iPods, trains and even combat airplanes, the Chinese are now cloning an entire European city. And not any city, but the mountain town of Hallstatt, Austria, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Chinese will replicate absolutely everything, not only the buildings. Every detail, statue and doorknob will be replicated. Even the old church, which has prompted the Catholic priest in town to say that the new church should be "declared a place of prayer" like the original. Knowing the Chinese government aversion to Catholicism and religion in general, I bet that will not happen.


...


While this is not the first time the Chinese are cloning architecture—they have mini-me versions of Barcelona or Venice—it's the first time they are going to actually reproduce an entire town.

 

[scarletmike]

WTF? Do they have some kind of cloning fetish or something?

 

[Poe McKnoe]

WTF? Do they have some kind of cloning fetish or something?

It's best described as coloring within the lines until they get good enough...in the next 50 years they might actually make some of their own stuff.

 

[MaxBuck]

China is an unusual place. I find the nation fascinating but have no desire nor intention ever to visit. And I'll never do any business with the Chinese; their business "ethics" is as different from ours as life on earth is from life on Jupiter.

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

China is an unusual place. I find the nation fascinating but have no desire nor intention ever to visit. And I'll never do any business with the Chinese; their business "ethics" is as different from ours as life on earth is from life on Jupiter.

Friend from school (an engineer) overseas a lot of his company's (blue chip consumer goods with an emphasis on kitchen electronics). In his view, there are three steadfast rules that need to be understood when doing business with the Chinese.

1) There is no such thing as win-win or a fair price for good product in their culture. In order to have "face," they have to think that they've ripped you off when they get up from the table. It's all about getting over on the other guy, and if the other guy is American/European, that drive to "get over" is increased exponentially.

2) Every factory has three sets of books. One they show their Western "partners." One they show the government. And, the real one.

3) Whatever you're asking them to build, you have to over engineer due to all the shortcuts and substandard products that they will try to sneak in during manufacturing. You want to get a Chevrolet, you need to negotiate and spec for them to build you a BMW.

 

[Taosman]

The Chinese are mostly building crap that will break so they can sell those crazy people in the US more crap. And they know they're building crap!

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

The Chinese are mostly building crap that will break so they can sell those crazy people in the US more crap. And they know they're building crap!

The worst thing is that our corporations handed them everything. It's not like the Chinese sent "their" products over here to compete with ours. It's not like the Japs or the Krauts in the 70s, who created their own brands and built and designed better products that they then sent over to compete in a free market.

This was all about our corporate "leaders" handing them our manufacturing base on a platter because they offered the prospect of paying workers subsistence wages with no workplace safety regulations, no environmental concerns, no benefits, no social safety net. I always ask people to name me one Chinese "brand" that they have in their homes stuffed with made in China goods. Nobody has yet been able to do so.

 

[muffler dragon]

The worst thing is that our corporations handed them everything. It's not like the Chinese sent "their" products over here to compete with ours. It's not like the Japs or the Krauts in the 70s, who created their own brands and built and designed better products that they then sent over to compete in a free market.

This was all about our corporate "leaders" handing them our manufacturing base on a platter because they offered the prospect of paying workers subsistence wages with no workplace safety regulations, no environmental concerns, no benefits, no social safety net. I always ask people to name me one Chinese "brand" that they have in their homes stuffed with made in China goods. Nobody has yet been able to do so.

I've trumpeted this elsewhere, so I apologize for being redundant.

"Our corporations" have handed the Chinese a LOT of manufacturing, because of the American consumer desiring a lower priced product. This is especially true in the furniture markets. North Carolina, California, and all the other states that were producing furniture had to go to China in order to maintain business in order to satisfy the low price that the American public wanted. I imagine that this has been the case in a vast number of other markets. And without attempting to swing the pendulum too far to one extreme, I'm sure that some companies moved simply for the reasons you stated above and have caused harm to the American economy. I just think it's valid to note that a fair share of the blame is also on our own shoulders.

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

I've trumpeted this elsewhere, so I apologize for being redundant.

"Our corporations" have handed the Chinese a LOT of manufacturing, because of the American consumer desiring a lower priced product. This is especially true in the furniture markets. North Carolina, California, and all the other states that were producing furniture had to go to China in order to maintain business in order to satisfy the low price that the American public wanted. I imagine that this has been the case in a vast number of other markets. And without attempting to swing the pendulum too far to one extreme, I'm sure that some companies moved simply for the reasons you stated above and have caused harm to the American economy. I just think it's valid to note that a fair share of the blame is also on our own shoulders.

Oh, I don't disagree that our own greed and hunger for the cheapest product has contributed. On a much grander scale, it's the Wal-Mart syndrome of people changing their shopping habits to save ten cents on a roll of toilet paper when W-M comes to town and then wondering why their little town square is all abandoned and boarded up. Although I'd be interested to see a serious study on how much the savings of made in China have really been passed down to consumers as opposed being kept as retained earnings, dividends or management bonuses.

Oh well, people shouldn't cry when that Chinese made sofa falls apart in four years while the benchmade NC sofa that I bought at Room & Board is still going strong for years afterwards.

Another interesting thought is that the N. American/European country that least tied its economy to China (Germany) seems to be coming out of the global recession the quickest and the strongest.

 

[Jake]

The Chinese are mostly building crap that will break so they can sell those crazy people in the US more crap. And they know they're building crap!

Americans
Love
Crap

 

[ochre]

The worst thing is that our corporations handed them everything. It's not like the Chinese sent "their" products over here to compete with ours. It's not like the Japs or the Krauts in the 70s, who created their own brands and built and designed better products that they then sent over to compete in a free market.

This was all about our corporate "leaders" handing them our manufacturing base on a platter because they offered the prospect of paying workers subsistence wages with no workplace safety regulations, no environmental concerns, no benefits, no social safety net. I always ask people to name me one Chinese "brand" that they have in their homes stuffed with made in China goods. Nobody has yet been able to do so.

I had a Haier DVD player. It kicked ass because you could make it region-free and get it to play DiVX movies back before that was available on mainstream devices.

 

[WaitingforKickoff]

Another interesting thought is that the N. American/European country that least tied its economy to China (Germany) seems to be coming out of the global recession the quickest and the strongest.

Interesting that you said that....

German exports shift from US to China

German exports in January rose 24.2 percent from a year earlier, pushing the country's trade surplus higher, while China overtook the Untied States as the leading importer of German goods, official figures showed Thursday.

cont...

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

Interesting that you said that....

German exports shift from US to China



cont...

Ahhh, but exporting goods TO China is not the same as boxing up your entire manufacturing base and handing it over to the Chinese so they can sell us our own brands back to us because their workers will work for subsistence wages with no workplace safety regulations, environmental regulations or basic labor laws.

 

[muffler dragon]

Friend from school (an engineer) overseas a lot of his company's (blue chip consumer goods with an emphasis on kitchen electronics). In his view, there are three steadfast rules that need to be understood when doing business with the Chinese.

1) There is no such thing as win-win or a fair price for good product in their culture. In order to have "face," they have to think that they've ripped you off when they get up from the table. It's all about getting over on the other guy, and if the other guy is American/European, that drive to "get over" is increased exponentially.

2) Every factory has three sets of books. One they show their Western "partners." One they show the government. And, the real one.

3) Whatever you're asking them to build, you have to over engineer due to all the shortcuts and substandard products that they will try to sneak in during manufacturing. You want to get a Chevrolet, you need to negotiate and spec for them to build you a BMW.

This ties in with something I found today (probably not new to others):

Muddy Waters LLC

Here are the articles.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-28/muddy-waters-is-shorting-china-s-spreadtrum.html

Muddy Waters LLC, the short-selling firm that drove Sino-Forest Corp. down 86 percent in June, met with less success yesterday after announcing a bet against Shanghai-based Spreadtrum Communications Inc. (SPRD)
The designer of chips for wireless devices plunged as much as 34 percent to $8.59 following the Muddy Waters report, then briefly erased the loss before closing down 3.5 percent at $12.49. Needham Group Inc. and Chardan Capital Markets said assertions by Carson Block?s firm that Spreadtrum may be misstating its financial results are overblown.
?It?s unusual that the stock came back the way it did,? said Robert Lawton, managing partner of Catoosa Fund LP, a Los Angeles-based hedge fund that doesn?t own the shares. ?This guy has been pretty bulletproof in his research recently, so it takes a lot to move the stock back nearly where it started. It may be because the analysts pounded on the table.?
Kathy Zhou, a Spreadtrum spokeswoman, didn?t respond to an e-mail sent outside regular business hours in Shanghai.
Chinese companies trading in North America have had almost $5 billion in market value erased since Muddy Waters? reports were released, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Sino- Forest, the timber company based in Hong Kong and Mississauga, Ontario, lost 71 percent in the two days after Block?s firm said it overstated assets.
?Nothing new is actually raised in the letter,? Quinn Bolton, an analyst at Needham, wrote in a report published during regular trading hours yesterday in New York, reiterating a ?buy? recommendation and $30 stock-price estimate. ?Muddy Waters is taking advantage of its success in identifying other fraudulent companies in China to raise questions about Spreadtrum in order to profit from its short position.?

cont.

Which led to:


http://www.muddywatersresearch.com/

Welcome to Muddy Waters Research

The Chinese have an old proverb, ?浑水摸鱼? (muddy waters make it easy to catch fish). In other words, opacity creates opportunities to make money. This way of thinking has been part of Chinese culture for centuries, and it is institutionalized in the modern PRC.
Western investors and their regulatory systems are inherently unprepared for muddy waters environments. Moreover, Harvard-educated Chinese analysts based in New York usually have little more in common with Chinese company managers than you do. As a result, many sub-par Chinese companies find ways to game the system and trade at inflated values. At the same time, a number of well-run and well-positioned companies are underappreciated because their managements, often abandoned by RTO or IPO sponsors, are awkward to foreign investors.

And...


http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/muddy-waters-research-is-a-thorn-to-some-chinese-companies/

Last week, the founder of the investment firm Muddy Waters Research issued a scathing report on a Chinese forestry company, calling it a ?pump and dump? scheme that has been ?aggressively committing fraud.?
The remarks set off a sharp sell-off in shares of the company, Sino-Forest, prompting Canadian authorities to temporarily halt trading. Since the report, the stock has fallen more than 70 percent, erasing billions of dollars in value from a company whose investors include Paulson & Company, the hedge fund run by the billionaire John A. Paulson.
?They overstated assets by billions of dollars and funneled money to an undisclosed subsidiary,? said Mr. Block, whose firm is based in Hong Kong and the United States.
Sino-Forest vehemently denies his assertions and released evidence to support its position. Canadian regulators, following the Muddy Waters report and the stock volatility, opened an investigation into the matter.
Mr. Block is delivering a controversial message to investors enamored with Chinese companies: buyer beware.
He has set his sights on a specific group of stocks that access the public markets through a back-door method known as a reverse merger. In such deals, private companies acquire a public shell company in the United States or Canada. They can quickly raise capital while avoiding the scrutiny and the cost of the traditional listing process. Today, there are more than 500 such Chinese companies in the United States, collectively worth billions of dollars.
On Thursday, the Securities and Exchange Commission warned about the potential risks of investing in reverse-merger companies, including murky financials and complicated ownership structures. The S.E.C. says it has suspended trading on more than a dozen stocks in this category, which lacked ?current, accurate information about these firms and their finances.?
?This is an area of heightened scrutiny for us,? said Kara N. Brockmeyer, an assistant director in the agency?s division of enforcement.
cont.

Rather interesting stuff (to me, at least).

 

[muffler dragon]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-05/wto-bolsters-complaints-over-china-exports.html

Complaints against China by the U.S., European Union and Mexico were bolstered by a World Trade Organization finding that the nation?s limits on raw-materials exports broke global rules and gave domestic companies an edge.
The ruling yesterday on the Geneva-based trade arbiter?s website was after an 18-month investigation of quotas, export duties and license requirements. China said it was evaluating the report. An appeal is highly likely, Mei Xinyu, a professor at a government trade institute, said today.
The restrictions have stoked tensions between China and its trading partners and boosted raw-material prices. The ruling may encourage the U.S. and the EU to now target Chinese restraints on rare earths, a group of 17 elements used in wind turbines, hybrid cars and guided missiles.
The finding is ?a significant victory for manufacturers and workers in the U.S. and the rest of the world,? U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said yesterday in an e-mail. The duties ?have caused massive distortions and harmful disruptions in supply chains throughout the global marketplace.?
The commodities at stake in yesterday?s decision included magnesium, manganese, silicon carbide, fluorspar, silicon carbide and yellow phosphorus, used by the steel, aluminum, automotive and chemicals industries.

cont.