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Great 2016 essay in Aeon about this topic, with concrete examples of how chabuduo is not just an annoyance for manufacturers, but often actively hazardous: htt

• fmajid 4y ago
  Also an excellent Wharton article on the related pgenome non of Quality Fade: https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/quality-fade-chinas-great-business-challenge/ https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/quality-fade-chi...
  • fmajid 4y ago
    How autocorrect thinks “pgenome” is a correction for “phenomenon” is beyond me.
    • Terr_ 4y ago
      I suspect my phone is dynamically acquiring stupid auto-correct words through internet-harvested trash data. For example, it prefers to capitalize Target even though I am never talking about the dang store.
• dirtyid 4y ago
  Not really. James "Beijing" Palmer bemoaning how most of PRC is still a developing country doing developing country things, including in tier1 cities full of poor, undereducated, undertrained, migrant workers who has to improvise/chabuduo their way to survive. That's the economic reality when about half the country are still lower middle income even if PRC is going to enter upper income per capita by years end. Ground conditions simply reflect disparity in material conditions throughout the country. He insinuates China is caught in a chabudo trap because CCP's afraid of plumbers (or anyone) organizing when it's really about the hundreds of millions left behind by rapid modernization who are trapped in informal economy because they're chabuduo tier workers and the country must accomodate their existence by accepting chabuduo level work where possible. He thinks PRC should be run by crafts people produced by years of rigourous training like in developed countries, when most of the country are tinkers produced by mediocre vocation training system established pre 90s when PRC was dirt poor. A system that's just getting some attention after being neglected for 20 years because state correctly prioritized resources towards highered / STEM. Really that's the crux of the situation, large swaths of PRC is still a developing country where good enough is a realistic baseline but also one so large the central gov can intervene and titrate resources / enforce policies to be globally competitive in domains that matter more for "national rejuvenation" or "comprehensive national power". Afterall, PRC didn't chabuduo it's way through a relatively sucessful space program, or other critical strategic indigenous industries. Note, this doesn't mean they didn't wildly spam industrial policy to inefficiently pursue goals, at PRC scale means hammering 100 chabuduoing iterations to generate 1 gem is a viable strategy.
  • thematrixturtle 4y ago
    That's a pretty hostile take? He's not saying chabuduo as some mythical, uniquely Chinese characteristic, and specifically calls out the migrant worker situation as leading directly to chabuduo. While wild income gaps definitely generate chabuduo in any developing country, as anyone who's seen electrical work in Thailand ("mai pen rai!") or road construction in India ("jugaad!") can attest, the uniquely Chinese spin is the hukuo system: those migrant workers are indeed "trapped", without any realistic possibility of ever graduating into a bona fide resident of Beijing or Shanghai, no matter how good their skills are.
    • dirtyid 4y ago
      >hostile take Indeed. Not directed at you (no intention to offend), but author. Article reflects BJPalmer's pattern of why XYZ quality/phenomenon tyical developing countries including China is CCP fault because party afraid of people/liberal values and not mere appropriate reflection on material conditions commiserate with economic realities. Having followed western China Watchers like him for a while, he's either eloquent dunning kruger who writes gud but missing the big picture, or crafty propagandist that knows exactly the narrative he wants to manufacture. Personally weighing towards latter since he managed to become deputy editor at Foreign Policy with his hot takes. > trapped", without any realistic possibility Most skilled labour class workers who do well arbituage tier1/2 wages and build big houses back home in tier 3/4/countryside where purchase power stretches much further. Granted there's more hukou reforms ongoing, but moving/diffusing/redistributing wealth from coastal to interior provinces to build out mid/low tier cities is the overarching PRC urbanism strategy. Some jobs like construction/trades was never going to pay enough to make living in tier1/2 cities feasible, massive excess labour means there wasn't realistic scenario where CCP will allow say, unionized elevator repairman to self regulate membership to point of holding society hostage and charge muchos rmb like in west and deny 100s of thousands others job opportunities. But the major omission/evasion/manipulation Palmer commits in this 2016 article, for which he should know better, especially if he choose to insist on lazy openning of the tofudreg construction chabuduo posterchild is balance picture with acknowledgement that PRC labours are also responsible for some of the most spectacular construction projects undertaken in recent memory. Having worked in the field on PRC projects, the amount of bullshit starchitect designs or ambitious infra projects that Chinese labours manage to build on time and have so far maintained - projects that central gov wants done right - is staggering and beyond capabilities of most western developers/builders. Meaning PRC excels at both end of the quality continuum, with caveat that even on the chabuduo end they can at least do cheap and fast versus many countries who would be lucky if they can only manage cheap. Other stupid reaching quips like "some art have survived" because new gen obviously want to make tradition lutes instead of focusing on new media modes like in western countries where many traditions are similarly fading, or how Chinese tech was an innovative exception but still chabuduos sloppy code / advertised quack meds as if that's not also customary in silicon valley. Broader point being, yes most of PRC nessicarily chabuduos, both by material limitation and by design. But PRC/CCP can also focus energy to to undertake world class efforts, a gear most countries, even most developed ones don't have. Palmer (deliberately) confuses ubiquious carelessness with developing country who is capable of targetted exceptionalism, which is more significant factor to understanding why PRC is doing things many developed countries can't do. In that sense PRC is not like Thailand or India, really it's on a seperate tier just below USA but above almost all other developed countries in terms of indigenous capabilities. Yet his conclusion is maybe "close enough is good enough", when good enough is "not enough" to explain host of indigenous Chinese accomplishments which require more than chabuduo mindset. IMO he misses the point badly fixating on chabuduo, but being familiar with his writing, I'm not sure if that wasn't the point.