But cutting corners to make cheaper products is now costing lives
By Peh Shing Huei 14 November 2008
BEIJING: Thirteen years after splurging 240,000 yuan (S$53,000) on a Swiss-made gleaming gold Rolex, Mr Wang Yongxing found out that it was neither made in Switzerland nor a Rolex.
The businessman realised that he had been conned only when he took the watch to the official workshop for repair and was rejected.
‘Black cannot be white, white cannot be black. It is a fake watch,’ he told The Straits Times, after starting proceedings to sue the sellers for 671,000 yuan in damages. ‘How dare they call it a Rolex?’
But in a country where counterfeiting, piracy and the habit of cutting corners are rampant and even celebrated - a street in eastern Nanjing city recently put up shop signs of ‘Bucksstar Coffee’ and ‘1-Eleven’ to attract attention - Mr Wang, 50, can be considered lucky.
Many Chinese have paid with their lives. Four babies died and 53,000 were hospitalised during the recent melamine in milk scandal. Shoddily constructed school buildings led to the deaths of thousands of children during May’s Sichuan earthquake.
Increasingly, this culture of imitation in China has gone from boon to bane.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, piracy and counterfeiting were a godsend. They allowed the Chinese to lay their hands on technology and products that they would not have been able to afford otherwise.
These ranged from the know-how to develop the latest motor engines to pirated Microsoft computer software.
The cheap copycat abilities of the Chinese manufacturers also spawned lucrative industries, offering fake goods to foreigners and affluent locals at a mere fraction of the prices of genuine products.
The United States estimates that global companies lose more than US$60 billion (S$91 billion) annually because of counterfeiting and piracy in China.
‘Grade A’ fake Gucci wallets and Louis Vuitton bags are commonly seen in the southern cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Tourists, including many Singaporeans, happily return home with these fake designer bags, often full of pirated DVDs of the latest Hollywood blockbusters.
Some five years ago, fake golf clubs were a popular export. While the cost of a set of the popular Japanese brand S-Yard was about S$7,700, the fakes cost S$500.
Today, fakery is a way of life here.
You could be sipping fake mineral water, using a fake cellphone, trying desperately to drown your sorrows in fake beer and taking fake medicine in vain to cure a hangover.
There are even fake eggs and fake compressed natural gas (CNG) that ‘fills’ vehicle tanks but offers little mileage.
But the growing greed for maximum profit has seen short-cuts getting even shorter, and this culture of counterfeiting is boomeranging back to haunt China.
In May’s 8.0-magnitude quake, school buildings made with minimal amounts of steel and concrete collapsed and buried thousands of children in Sichuan.
The industrial chemical melamine, added to milk to show a higher protein content, killed at least four children and caused over 50,000 to be hospitalised.
Experts do not believe that the problem will improve anytime soon.
‘The central government is serious about the problem. But the whole of China is fertile ground for fakery. It is not just the companies or a few individuals,’ said social commentator Hu Xingdou of the Beijing Institute of Technology.
‘Officials like to give fake reports and the media offers fake news. The entire system in China is fake. Melamine has been added to milk for a long time and industry insiders were all aware of it.
‘Even if you want to report the problem, you don’t know where to do it. Local officials can command the media not to report. Postings online are deleted quickly. Counterfeiting can go on because most of it is successfully covered up. I believe it’s a problem which will dog China for the next two, three decades.’
China’s top consumer rights activist Wang Hai, who represented Mr Wang Yongxing in his Rolex case, agreed.
‘There are no independent consumer rights’ associations to do spot checks and conduct research,’ he told The Straits Times. ‘This is a society that is driven by the corporations. It does not cater to the consumers.’
But Professor Yang Dali of the University of Chicago was slightly more optimistic. While slamming the regulatory authorities for being ‘asleep at the wheel for years’, he believed that these are China’s growing pains.
He said: ‘The demands of the domestic consumers as well as the international market will go up, forcing the Chinese producers to step up. But, of course, it will take time.’
1 comment:
Being fake is very real in China
But cutting corners to make cheaper products is now costing lives
By Peh Shing Huei
14 November 2008
BEIJING: Thirteen years after splurging 240,000 yuan (S$53,000) on a Swiss-made gleaming gold Rolex, Mr Wang Yongxing found out that it was neither made in Switzerland nor a Rolex.
The businessman realised that he had been conned only when he took the watch to the official workshop for repair and was rejected.
‘Black cannot be white, white cannot be black. It is a fake watch,’ he told The Straits Times, after starting proceedings to sue the sellers for 671,000 yuan in damages. ‘How dare they call it a Rolex?’
But in a country where counterfeiting, piracy and the habit of cutting corners are rampant and even celebrated - a street in eastern Nanjing city recently put up shop signs of ‘Bucksstar Coffee’ and ‘1-Eleven’ to attract attention - Mr Wang, 50, can be considered lucky.
Many Chinese have paid with their lives. Four babies died and 53,000 were hospitalised during the recent melamine in milk scandal. Shoddily constructed school buildings led to the deaths of thousands of children during May’s Sichuan earthquake.
Increasingly, this culture of imitation in China has gone from boon to bane.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, piracy and counterfeiting were a godsend. They allowed the Chinese to lay their hands on technology and products that they would not have been able to afford otherwise.
These ranged from the know-how to develop the latest motor engines to pirated Microsoft computer software.
The cheap copycat abilities of the Chinese manufacturers also spawned lucrative industries, offering fake goods to foreigners and affluent locals at a mere fraction of the prices of genuine products.
The United States estimates that global companies lose more than US$60 billion (S$91 billion) annually because of counterfeiting and piracy in China.
‘Grade A’ fake Gucci wallets and Louis Vuitton bags are commonly seen in the southern cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Tourists, including many Singaporeans, happily return home with these fake designer bags, often full of pirated DVDs of the latest Hollywood blockbusters.
Some five years ago, fake golf clubs were a popular export. While the cost of a set of the popular Japanese brand S-Yard was about S$7,700, the fakes cost S$500.
Today, fakery is a way of life here.
You could be sipping fake mineral water, using a fake cellphone, trying desperately to drown your sorrows in fake beer and taking fake medicine in vain to cure a hangover.
There are even fake eggs and fake compressed natural gas (CNG) that ‘fills’ vehicle tanks but offers little mileage.
But the growing greed for maximum profit has seen short-cuts getting even shorter, and this culture of counterfeiting is boomeranging back to haunt China.
In May’s 8.0-magnitude quake, school buildings made with minimal amounts of steel and concrete collapsed and buried thousands of children in Sichuan.
The industrial chemical melamine, added to milk to show a higher protein content, killed at least four children and caused over 50,000 to be hospitalised.
Experts do not believe that the problem will improve anytime soon.
‘The central government is serious about the problem. But the whole of China is fertile ground for fakery. It is not just the companies or a few individuals,’ said social commentator Hu Xingdou of the Beijing Institute of Technology.
‘Officials like to give fake reports and the media offers fake news. The entire system in China is fake. Melamine has been added to milk for a long time and industry insiders were all aware of it.
‘Even if you want to report the problem, you don’t know where to do it. Local officials can command the media not to report. Postings online are deleted quickly. Counterfeiting can go on because most of it is successfully covered up. I believe it’s a problem which will dog China for the next two, three decades.’
China’s top consumer rights activist Wang Hai, who represented Mr Wang Yongxing in his Rolex case, agreed.
‘There are no independent consumer rights’ associations to do spot checks and conduct research,’ he told The Straits Times. ‘This is a society that is driven by the corporations. It does not cater to the consumers.’
But Professor Yang Dali of the University of Chicago was slightly more optimistic. While slamming the regulatory authorities for being ‘asleep at the wheel for years’, he believed that these are China’s growing pains.
He said: ‘The demands of the domestic consumers as well as the international market will go up, forcing the Chinese producers to step up. But, of course, it will take time.’
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