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China: From fake electronics to fake lions and museums.
I believe it really comes down to a completely different set of cultural values; I don't think the Chinese really think they're doing anything "wrong", they just think they're taking advantage of the "white devil's" greed. It really is a different way of thinking, I don't think I will ever understand it.
In my experience, all of that is exactly correct. The Chinese have never really had a concept of "intellectual property" and they're not about to start now.
Paradoxically, the PRC has had IP laws since 1979 and they are apparently quite good. Enforcement and penalties however, trespass into the comedically ridiculous.
So what's the cause? A blogger who lived in China had this to say:
I don’t know if it’s a result of Confucianism, the legacy of communism or just a lot of people packed into a small space all trying to make a living, but there certainly is a different mentality in China as opposed to the West when it comes to issues of what is considered private versus public.
This difference was made clear to me many years ago on my first day as an exchange student back in the 1990’s at a Chinese university located in Harbin. I returned to the dorm after lunch and found my Chinese roommate sitting at my desk with his feet on my bed, leaning back in the chair while filing through my personal belongings in the drawers and on the desk. I assumed that when he saw me come further into the room he would be embarrassed and stop messing around with my stuff. The opposite happened.
Since the door was now open, he yelled to the other students in the hall to come in and take a look. At first I thought this was just people being curious about me as a foreigner, but after spending time in the dorm, I realized that this is how Chinese people deal with each other. Dorm room size is similar to a dorm back home, but in China there are 4 to 8 people in the room! That means precious little space to keep things private. It also means the students get used to sharing their belongings with the group and the group is used to accessing any and all available resources. For example, one student may have the radio, another brings a small TV, and the third student has a rice cooker and so on. Since everybody shares, it keeps costs down but at the same time the boundary between what is private and public is blurred.
The same mentality extends into the business world, yet is in dramatic conflict with the western mentality of public versus private domain. Just as the room mates in the dorm had no ethical objections to using my personal items like my computer, some suppliers may not even think twice, or feel embarrassed, about using for their personal gain, what you believe to be your IP.
I have no personal animus in the slightest toward the Chinese people. As you said, they don't believe they doing anything "wrong". It's simply how things are in the PRC.
An example I give to people is a comparison of our attitude here in United States (and likely elsewhere) about speed limits.
Going a 1 or 2 miles per hour over the limit is indeed breaking the law, but;
1. Everybody does it
2. It's really not "hurting" anybody
3. The police don't care
4. A judge is not going to care
Imagine somebody sternly insisted, demanding, that you strictly obey the exact posted speed limit. You'd look at them in bewilderment and probably a bit of pity.
So too is my experience with Chinese businesses: They have a baffled confusion as to why I'm so concerned that they're doing clearly illegal things with the product they sent me.
This includes things like re-marking the microchips with a different Date of Manufacture. In their eyes, they are doing me a favor. In my eyes and the eyes of the law, they're fraudulently altering the record of that chips age. This is like rolling the odometer back on a car.
Along the same lines, consistently and without fail, I had to demand (in written Chinese, as they tend to ignore anything written in English as not applying to them) that they truthfully declare the correct description and value of the product on Custom's declarations forms. Again, I would always received baffled and dismayed replies as to why they should do such a thing.
“He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”
At a personal level, there is a distinct difference in thinking.
But the second dimension to this is political. The counterfeit market keeps a sizeable segment of the Chinese population employed, proper enforcement would risk social instability, something the leadership has tried to avoid. Moreover, imposing a Western concept of commerce at odds with Chinese moral thought, has been tried in the past. The humiliation by foreign business interests in the 19th Century shaped Chinese thinking today, whereby the leadership refuses to give effect to demands by western merchants (and provisions of economic treaty obligations such as Intellectual Property rights) if it is counterproductive to them.
The question that arises, is as China's economy makes a difficult transition over the coming decade, will cracking down on counterfeit goods be parallel to the leaderships economic and social interests?
On a side note, it is also not uncommon for factories to overproduce on orders made by western firms, then siphon genuine goods such as clothing etc. onto the local market. Not everything sold illicitly on the Chinese black market is fake.
But there is a genius to all this. China signs the many international agreements collecting all the advantages and privileges of being an an economic member, then cleverly refuses to enforce anything it doesn't like. If only we were that smart.
But the second dimension to this is political. The counterfeit market keeps a sizeable segment of the Chinese population employed, proper enforcement would risk social instability, something the leadership has tried to avoid
Indeed. This is almost certainly what prevents a mass-crackdown on counterfeiting. It would devastate the Chinese economy.
The question that arises, is as China's economy makes a difficult transition over the coming decade, will cracking down on counterfeit goods be parallel to the leaderships economic and social interests?
I don't see China truly becoming the economic powerhouse it desires to be without that mass-crackdown. Their currency valuation is also a major factor.
On a side note, it is also not uncommon for factories to overproduce on orders made by western firms, then siphon genuine goods such as clothing etc. onto the local market. Not everything sold illicitly on the Chinese black market is fake.
Ah yes, the "3rd Shift production". The 1st and 2nd shift are run as per the contract with the OEM. A phantom "3rd shift" is run for the factories personal profit.
Usually when confronted by this overproduction, the factory managers are confused (real or feigned) by the accusation, stating that they have a legal contract to produce the goods...they were unaware(?) that there were limitations to the quantity.
“He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”
The more I learn about China the more I want to learn. I bet it would be interesting to live there a few months.
I've only just spent a day in Hong Kong so far. Humid, but after getting used to Australia I wasn't as uncomfortable as I expected to be.
So how do you find those cheap not fake deals?
Originally posted by GVChamp
College students are very, very, very dumb. But that's what you get when the government subsidizes children to sit in the middle of a corn field to drink alcohol and fuck.
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