4 ms·

Poorly Made in China: Why So Many Chinese Products are Born to be Bad

49 points by dpapathanasiou 17y ago

dxjones 17y ago
great explanation of the "quality fade" phenomenon
Chocobean 17y ago
So they went into details about how, exactly, "paying poorly gets you poor goods" works. We all know this, but perhaps not all of us understood the intricacies of 1) Quality Fade 2) 3rd party testing companies 3) cultural differences such as whistle blowing, information sharing and available "official"
kailoa 17y ago
Good article, but all problem description, no solutions. I'd like to understand what drove the Japanese and American industries to turn around, and how much of that is applicable to China.
- zcrar70 17y ago
  Good article, but all problem description, no solutions. That's true of this article, and often of Economist articles generally; this isn't necessarily a negative though, because it provided an enlightening insight into circumstances that weren't necessarily obvious beforehand (to me anyway.) I'd like to understand what drove the Japanese and American industries to turn around, and how much of that is applicable to China. I get the impression that the business models of America, Japan and China are quite different; I don't think the US or Japan started out like China and then changed, on the contrary I think they set out in different circumstances and therefore with different aims. I get the impression China is attempting to compete almost solely on cost, which wasn't the case of the US (innovation) or Japan (a combination of cost/quality and innovation.)
  - chaostheory 17y ago
    China may be very different from Japan in terms of culture and industrial history, but I'm not so sure China's current industrial evolution is that different from the US. If you read books about the US's industrial revolution (both modern ones and ones written during the era), I'm sure you can find a lot of parallels with modern China (even with issues such as IP - Charles Dickens was angry seeing bootleg copies of his books in the US)
- Chocobean 17y ago
  The solution has been pointed out hundreds of years ago, that is, the people need to reform. The hardware (factories, buildings, businesses, investments, machines...) are all there, the software (human minds) isn't up to speed. I am no historian or economist, but I will suggest that perhaps the States had the "protestant work ethic", and that the Japanese had "loyalty to manager, company, and country." The Chinese have neither; in a country that went from Corrupt and Dying Monarchy to War to Communist Revolution to Rapid Modernization, Materialism and Capitalism in a hundred years, the Chinese are still searching for a culturally unifying identity. Esp the last 50 years has been cut-throat, sell-your-mother-to-prosper survival mode, and the way businesses are run now reflect this. When the people feel more in control, feel ownership of their lives, they will start to feel more responsible towards themselves, their families, and to their communities. I don't know, that's just what I think/hope. Anyone else?
- tokenadult 17y ago
  I'd like to understand what drove the Japanese and American industries to turn around, and how much of that is applicable to China. Among other factors, a free press and an independent judiciary, neither of which China has yet.
  - Chocobean 17y ago
    speaking of free press, the 20th anniversary of 6/4 is coming up... My prayers go out to the families. =..=
- ableal 17y ago
  but all problem description, no solutions Left as an exercise for the reader. Good. Seriously, now that you made me think about it, we are much too much inured to articles by writers who have solutions, and are damn well going to find problems for them.
jbrun 17y ago
This article struck me as rather superficial. Though quality fade and IP are big problems, I fail to see how the problems are different from early Japanese or American industry. Having lived in China for a year (Beijing and elsewhere), I can state two things: They are getting better, very quickly and they are starting to clamp down on environmental, health and compensation issues. It takes time, China started to really develop in the mid 90s, so it has only been 15 years or so. It takes time to develop environmental, health, workers compensation and IP regulations. Even once you have the regulations in place, it takes years to make the business community aware and respectful of them. Many (if not most) of the factory bosses are former peasants or lower class people who have little to no education. They are just trying to build a small company. That does not excuse the gross abuses of power, but it does explain them. There needs to be a certain "societal" education on these issues, it took a hundred years in the west, and the environmental (sustainability) mouvement, started in the 1950s is only mainstream since 2006ish. Oh and don't forget, China is 3 times bigger than the US and 10 times bigger than Japan. See this other NYT article from 2005 on the topic: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E2DD1239F93AA35752C0A9639C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E2DD1239F...
- Chocobean 17y ago
  actually I thought the article did a good job not China-bashing. It merely points out the problems nowadays, but it isn't saying that China can't change, or isn't changing. Just, if you are, this moment, ready to hire a Chinese plant to do your manufacturing, this is what you have to be careful of. A year later, who knows. In terms of "high notes" in technological strengths and quality, China has long ago passed US and Japan. Just that no investor is paying for the best, so, things that aren't the best are shipped.
- megaduck 17y ago
  Many good points, but I have a few quibbles. While I agree that things are getting better, I'm increasingly mistrustful of the "progress" being made on the regulatory front. There's a lot of new rules on the books, but I don't see a lot of real change occurring. Good regulation requires independent monitoring and enforcement, and right now there's neither. The majority of large businesses have at least some level of government involvement and control, and many are outright state-owned. Moreover, the level of corruption is pretty staggering, to the point where being a government official is currently the best (and often the only) path to real wealth and power. Quality control and product safety are remarkably difficult in that kind of environment. Hopefully you're right, and solving these things will just take time. However, I don't think we have the option of sanguinely standing by and waiting for things to get better. Consumers and business clients need to demand better quality, the Chinese public needs to demand a more transparent and honest government, and those demands have to be made constantly and consistently. That's the only way change is going to happen.
russell 17y ago
When I was a kid, Japanese products were visibly cheap and poorly made. American products were also poorly made, but not quite so bad as the Japanese. The quality gap was relatively easy to overcome. The American electronics manufacturers were not very innovative. When Sony came out with transistor pocket radios, American radios were still table top vacuum tube boxes. When the Japanese captured the TV market with integrated circuits, Zenith was advertising the benefits of hand soldered components. Ampex invented the VCR, but couldnt produce the recording heads needed for the home. The Japanese got their reputation by concentrating in quality on a few key industries. By 1984 HP was refusing American made memory chips, because they were so inferior. That triggered a restructuring of industry that powered the economy for the next 20 years. Interestingly enough, the Japanese had a similar structure to the Chinese with large companies and lots of subcontractors. However, their motivation was to have the subcontractor absorb employment fluctuations and cost squeezes, not to hide violations of quality standards.
- phoxix2 17y ago
  William Deming is the reason the Japanese had high quality electronics. American's wouldn't listen to him, the Japanese needed him desperately. Today the Japanese love that man. (While the Americans weren't listening to Deming, Harvard Biz Profs even went as far as to predict that Deming/Japan's love for quality would not be sustainable and its competitive advantage would erode. It turns out they were right, the Koreans are the example of this.)
  - ojbyrne 17y ago
    I don't think I've ever heard of him referred to as William Deming (it took me a second to recognize who you were talking about). I've always heard Edwards Deming or W. Edwards Deming.
- 10ren 17y ago
  USA: We need 100,000 integrated circuits, with a defect rate of 1 in 10,000. Can you do that? JPN: Well... that's very difficult. But I think... yes, yes I think we can do it. 6 months later, he returns with a very large box and a very small one JPN: This was much more difficult than we thought, but we managed to modify our processes to obtain the exact defect rate you requested. Here are the defect-free chips. USA: Well, I'm very impressed! To be honest, I didn't think you could do it. But tell me, what's in the small box? JPN: Those are the 10 defects.
known 17y ago
Japan and China have become world leaders in manufacturing sector by IMPORTING American products (for eg a Ford car) to their countries and EXPORTING back the same to USA by incrementally remodeling,renaming and re-engineering it. And they were exporting these products back to America at a reduced price.

great explanation of the "quality fade" phenomenon

So they went into details about how, exactly, "paying poorly gets you poor goods" works. We all know this, but perhaps not all of us understood the intricacies of 1) Quality Fade 2) 3rd party testing companies 3) cultural differences such as whistle blowing, information sharing and available "official"

kailoa 17y ago

Good article, but all problem description, no solutions. I'd like to understand what drove the Japanese and American industries to turn around, and how much of that is applicable to China.

zcrar70 17y ago
Good article, but all problem description, no solutions. That's true of this article, and often of Economist articles generally; this isn't necessarily a negative though, because it provided an enlightening insight into circumstances that weren't necessarily obvious beforehand (to me anyway.) I'd like to understand what drove the Japanese and American industries to turn around, and how much of that is applicable to China. I get the impression that the business models of America, Japan and China are quite different; I don't think the US or Japan started out like China and then changed, on the contrary I think they set out in different circumstances and therefore with different aims. I get the impression China is attempting to compete almost solely on cost, which wasn't the case of the US (innovation) or Japan (a combination of cost/quality and innovation.)
- chaostheory 17y ago
  China may be very different from Japan in terms of culture and industrial history, but I'm not so sure China's current industrial evolution is that different from the US. If you read books about the US's industrial revolution (both modern ones and ones written during the era), I'm sure you can find a lot of parallels with modern China (even with issues such as IP - Charles Dickens was angry seeing bootleg copies of his books in the US)
Chocobean 17y ago
The solution has been pointed out hundreds of years ago, that is, the people need to reform. The hardware (factories, buildings, businesses, investments, machines...) are all there, the software (human minds) isn't up to speed. I am no historian or economist, but I will suggest that perhaps the States had the "protestant work ethic", and that the Japanese had "loyalty to manager, company, and country." The Chinese have neither; in a country that went from Corrupt and Dying Monarchy to War to Communist Revolution to Rapid Modernization, Materialism and Capitalism in a hundred years, the Chinese are still searching for a culturally unifying identity. Esp the last 50 years has been cut-throat, sell-your-mother-to-prosper survival mode, and the way businesses are run now reflect this. When the people feel more in control, feel ownership of their lives, they will start to feel more responsible towards themselves, their families, and to their communities. I don't know, that's just what I think/hope. Anyone else?
tokenadult 17y ago
I'd like to understand what drove the Japanese and American industries to turn around, and how much of that is applicable to China. Among other factors, a free press and an independent judiciary, neither of which China has yet.
- Chocobean 17y ago
  speaking of free press, the 20th anniversary of 6/4 is coming up... My prayers go out to the families. =..=
ableal 17y ago
but all problem description, no solutions Left as an exercise for the reader. Good. Seriously, now that you made me think about it, we are much too much inured to articles by writers who have solutions, and are damn well going to find problems for them.

jbrun 17y ago

This article struck me as rather superficial. Though quality fade and IP are big problems, I fail to see how the problems are different from early Japanese or American industry. Having lived in China for a year (Beijing and elsewhere), I can state two things: They are getting better, very quickly and they are starting to clamp down on environmental, health and compensation issues. It takes time, China started to really develop in the mid 90s, so it has only been 15 years or so. It takes time to develop environmental, health, workers compensation and IP regulations. Even once you have the regulations in place, it takes years to make the business community aware and respectful of them. Many (if not most) of the factory bosses are former peasants or lower class people who have little to no education. They are just trying to build a small company. That does not excuse the gross abuses of power, but it does explain them. There needs to be a certain "societal" education on these issues, it took a hundred years in the west, and the environmental (sustainability) mouvement, started in the 1950s is only mainstream since 2006ish. Oh and don't forget, China is 3 times bigger than the US and 10 times bigger than Japan. See this other NYT article from 2005 on the topic: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E2DD1239F93AA35752C0A9639C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E2DD1239F...

Chocobean 17y ago
actually I thought the article did a good job not China-bashing. It merely points out the problems nowadays, but it isn't saying that China can't change, or isn't changing. Just, if you are, this moment, ready to hire a Chinese plant to do your manufacturing, this is what you have to be careful of. A year later, who knows. In terms of "high notes" in technological strengths and quality, China has long ago passed US and Japan. Just that no investor is paying for the best, so, things that aren't the best are shipped.
megaduck 17y ago
Many good points, but I have a few quibbles. While I agree that things are getting better, I'm increasingly mistrustful of the "progress" being made on the regulatory front. There's a lot of new rules on the books, but I don't see a lot of real change occurring. Good regulation requires independent monitoring and enforcement, and right now there's neither. The majority of large businesses have at least some level of government involvement and control, and many are outright state-owned. Moreover, the level of corruption is pretty staggering, to the point where being a government official is currently the best (and often the only) path to real wealth and power. Quality control and product safety are remarkably difficult in that kind of environment. Hopefully you're right, and solving these things will just take time. However, I don't think we have the option of sanguinely standing by and waiting for things to get better. Consumers and business clients need to demand better quality, the Chinese public needs to demand a more transparent and honest government, and those demands have to be made constantly and consistently. That's the only way change is going to happen.

russell 17y ago

When I was a kid, Japanese products were visibly cheap and poorly made. American products were also poorly made, but not quite so bad as the Japanese. The quality gap was relatively easy to overcome. The American electronics manufacturers were not very innovative. When Sony came out with transistor pocket radios, American radios were still table top vacuum tube boxes. When the Japanese captured the TV market with integrated circuits, Zenith was advertising the benefits of hand soldered components. Ampex invented the VCR, but couldnt produce the recording heads needed for the home. The Japanese got their reputation by concentrating in quality on a few key industries. By 1984 HP was refusing American made memory chips, because they were so inferior. That triggered a restructuring of industry that powered the economy for the next 20 years. Interestingly enough, the Japanese had a similar structure to the Chinese with large companies and lots of subcontractors. However, their motivation was to have the subcontractor absorb employment fluctuations and cost squeezes, not to hide violations of quality standards.

phoxix2 17y ago
William Deming is the reason the Japanese had high quality electronics. American's wouldn't listen to him, the Japanese needed him desperately. Today the Japanese love that man. (While the Americans weren't listening to Deming, Harvard Biz Profs even went as far as to predict that Deming/Japan's love for quality would not be sustainable and its competitive advantage would erode. It turns out they were right, the Koreans are the example of this.)
- ojbyrne 17y ago
  I don't think I've ever heard of him referred to as William Deming (it took me a second to recognize who you were talking about). I've always heard Edwards Deming or W. Edwards Deming.
10ren 17y ago
USA: We need 100,000 integrated circuits, with a defect rate of 1 in 10,000. Can you do that? JPN: Well... that's very difficult. But I think... yes, yes I think we can do it. 6 months later, he returns with a very large box and a very small one JPN: This was much more difficult than we thought, but we managed to modify our processes to obtain the exact defect rate you requested. Here are the defect-free chips. USA: Well, I'm very impressed! To be honest, I didn't think you could do it. But tell me, what's in the small box? JPN: Those are the 10 defects.

known 17y ago

Japan and China have become world leaders in manufacturing sector by IMPORTING American products (for eg a Ford car) to their countries and EXPORTING back the same to USA by incrementally remodeling,renaming and re-engineering it. And they were exporting these products back to America at a reduced price.