The World's Factory

My laptop is about to give up the ghost. It's been making these strange noises lately and I don't recall doing anything different to it. Anyway, it's about time I upgraded. Over the last 4 years it has served me well, even when I was playing World of Warcraft. The fools thought one couldn't play on a laptop. Anyway, this will have to be a short post.

I was reading an article in The Economist dated a few weeks back. Though once I read the article the author could have written it to 10 years ago and it would still be relevant today. Basically, s/he (one does not know the author as The Economist rarely puts names to the articles. Perhaps the infinite monkey theory works and The Economist is the epitome of all those monkeys' work) is at the pulpit admonishing the Chinese for flooding the (mainly US) market with cheaply made and in some cases dangerous products from food to flip flops. The article sums up the situation saying the words 'Made in China' are becoming a slur as safety standards are almost non-existent. Luckily there is a little light at the end of the tunnel for China's manufacturers as in the past the same connotation of shoddiness was attached to the words 'Made in Korea' and 'Made in Japan'. I especially remember this reference in Back to the Future III as Doc is inspecting a microchip and leans over to Marty saying, "No wonder this circuit failed! It says, 'Made in Japan'." Marty corrects him saying, "What do you mean, Doc? All the best stuff's made in Japan." Doc looks incredulously back saying, "Unbelievable." Or more recently, in Transformers where there are several references to Japanese-made products connoting their high quality.

Interestingly enough, we all knew anything that carried the label 'Made in China' was bound to have half the life of an identical product made anywhere else in the world. That was the joke among the Chinese students at high school. I don't find their reaction strange at all since even I would shirk away from something that read 'Made in Australia' if I knew it was likely to self-destruct.

So why all the fuss now? Methinks this nonsense has it's roots in the outsourcing of almost any manufacturing to China. China has had the nickname "The World's Factory" thrust upon it from the simple fact that multinationals, ever keen to reduce labour costs, have moved production offshore. So perhaps these same multinationals are beginning to realise there is a price to pay for keeping labour costs as low as possible. Though one wonders what price can be put on Coca-Cola's or McDonald's reputation.