Raising the image of "Made in China"

Since the rash of unfavorable publicity on poorly made products from China, some even with deadly consequences, I have been thinking about this matter. China has become such a dominant manufactuer of goods that any negative publicity hurts the image of all the products made in China. The damage can be enormous affecting not just export sales but the lingering reputation that China makes only shoddy goods.

Yet, given China's enormous population and geographical breadth, assuring product reliability and conformity to accepted standards from every manufactuer is a daunting if not impossible task. The irony is that as China become more successful as the global supplier, the task of protecting the image of products from China become ever more challenging.

In order to rectify the image of goods made in China, I have been an advocate for the Beijing Central Government to establish a website where any person or company can register and complain about quality and other problems they encounter from suppliers in China. In such a website, the complaint should identify the party and the location of the party as well as describing the nature of the dispute.

This approach can have three major benefits:

(1) By erecting such a site, China is proclaiming to the world that the government is promoting transparency in business transaction and is encouraging buyers from all over the world to help China maintain the consistent quality of products made in China.

(2) The information on the website can help QSIQ (full name: General Administration of Quality Supervision Inspection and Quarantine) identify the trouble spots and focus their surveillance and enforcement efforts in problem regions of China.

(3) Local officials are no longer motivated to abet, shelter or protect offending suppliers of sub-quality goods, since such producers can run and hide but the local officials cannot.

The immediate impact of such a website is to raise the confidence of buyers and consumers of goods made in China.

In order for such a website to realize its potential, it must be easy to use and must be tamper proof. Anyone wishing to register a complaint may not do so anonymously but must provide verifiable information about him/herself and the organization he/she is representing. The identity of the complainer must be kept confidential and available only to the people managing the website.

To encourage participation, the government may even consider offering a reward or suitable recognition as a friend of China for each complaint that leads to arrest of the offending party.

Let's Talk About Tibet

Hard facts and data on Tibet are hard to come by, most come from Beijing which folks in the West tend to reflexively dismiss as propaganda. I have just returned from Beijing where a retrospective on the 50 years of reform in Tibet is on display. I propose to focus on various statistical data presented at the exhibit and examine them for possible validity and credibility.

Nobody knows exactly how many Tibetan exiles live outside of China. A general consensus is around 150,000. Using this number as base, there are around 18 to 19 Tibetans living inside Tibet for every exile outside of China. Since there are slightly more Tibetans living in surrounding provinces outside of Tibet, we are on reasonably safe grounds to assume that there are 40 times more Tibetans inside China than out.

I find it strange that Dalai Lama and his cohort representing 2.5% of all the Tibetans are regarded as the legitimate voices representing all the Tibetans. His Holiness and most of his lieutenants have not seen Tibet for 50 years. Their assertions and statements about Tibet surely could not be more accurate than those coming from Beijing.

According to the exhibit in Beijing, the population in Tibet before the reform was roughly divided into three groups of people. The first group consisted of government officials, monks in monasteries and those of nobility made up about 5% of the population. The major group of serfs made up about 90%. The so called serfs have no rights and were obligated to provide free labor to the land owning class. The remaining 5% were called lang sheng （郎生）, a genteel sounding name for the unfortunate group of people that were owned by the ruling class and treated like livestock.

The ruling class owned approximately 99.7% of all the agriculture land divided as follows: Local government officials - 38.9%
Monasteries - 36.8
Nobility - 24.0
Self supporting Tibetans 0.3

After Beijing suppressed the insurrection in 1959 that led to exile of the Dalai Lama to India, the central government began land reform in earnest which was completed by October 1960. During this period, approximately 85% of the land was redistributed to 200,000 households of former serfs and slaves, representing about 800,000 people that became land owners. There were approximately one million Tibetans living in Tibet then. The land distributed was equivalent to about 187,000 hectares.

Compared to the grain output before land reform, the yield in 2008 has improved by more than 4 fold and total heads of livestock increased by 2.5 fold. Nonetheless, even today locally derived revenue accounts for barely over 6% of the total budget, with the rest of Tibet’s annual expenditure coming from the central government subsidy.

The life expectancy in Tibet has improved from 35.5 years in 1959 to 67 in 2008. Today, the number of color TV’s in the urban area is 131 per 100 households and 62 TV’s per 100 households in the rural area. Even so, the exhibit admitted that the per capita GDP in Tibet is almost 40% below national average.

Approximately 98.5% of Tibetan children now attend primary schools and about 95% of the schools offer bilingual courses in both Chinese and Tibetan. In 1951, more than 95% of the Tibetan population was illiterate.

Are these facts and figures about Tibet “reliable”?

China has over 50 identifiably distinct ethnic minorities living in China. The policy of the central government is to extend favorable treatment to each ethnic group such as allowing more than one child per family, affirmative action influenced admission standards to higher education and bi-lingual education. The policy is to preserve ethnic diversity and not to eliminate them. Tibetans are treated no different from other ethnic minorities.

A world congress on Buddhism has just been concluded in Hangzhou before the venue moved on to Taiwan. The practice of Buddhism is flourishing in China and there is no evidence of any policy to discourage worship. Unless “cultural genocide” is strictly defined as preserving the good old days before the Communists entered Tibet, there is no indication of genocide of any kind taking place in China.

The “good old days” when Dalai Lama ruled Tibet were ghastly and brutal to most of the ordinary Tibetans. Not only there were no highways, TV’s and telephones, the exhibit showed plenty of photos of Tibetans with feet, hands, eyes or noses cut off as punishment meted by their masters.

Surely there can be no doubt that the lives of most Tibetans are better today than it was fifty years ago.

China's economic stimulus: Acting locally

While Rome was burning, Nero fiddled. Now, while the Obama Administration is working to douse the economic firestorm, politicians and pundits from both ends of the spectrum continue to indulge on petty politics.

At least that’s what it looked like on CNN to someone who was travelling in China—namely, politics as usual in Washington. Pundit Rush Limbaugh even publicly wished that Obama would fail and a good contingent of politicians rushed to prostrate before this idol of babble.

Wishing Obama to fail? “You can’t be serious,” to use the words of a famous tennis idol. There is life after a wrong call by the line judge but I shudder to think about what life is going to be like if Obama does not pull America out of the economic tailspin.

By virtually every account I have read, China is confronting the economic crisis much more effectively than Washington. The local governments are working in step with the central government to stimulate the economy and nobody is wishing that the Hu Jintao government should fail.

The Business Class cabin on the transpacific flight was not even half full, and I was able to buy an air ticket from Wuhan to Shanghai at 70% off list. All the domestic flights inside China I was on were not full. No question, China is also feeling the economic drag of worldwide downturn.


China’s domestic flights would’ve been emptier were it not for tour groups of Chinese. I saw groups sporting identical caps and travel bags at all the airports getting ready to go somewhere. I was seeing a lot of travelers in a normally non-busy part of the travel season.

Beijing’s Wangfujing was busy and full of shoppers. Normally a popular commercial street and tourist attraction, the open pedestrian mall showed no strains of economic slow-down. If anything, the parade of organized tour groups led by guides holding up their banners contributed to a festive atmosphere.

Nearby Tiananmen Square was as full of tourists as if in midst of a busy tourist season. The only difference was that virtually all the tourists were from inside China.

During my short stroll at Tiananmen, I was handed bills advertising group tours to attractions around Beijing. One all-day outing included the Great Wall, Ming Tombs, nearby reservoir, a typical old Beijing courtyard residence, the Olympic stadium and nearby Water Cube (where swimming competition took place), along with assorted brief stops on the way.

For the inclusive price equivalent to US$15, the tourist gets pick-up and return delivery, ride in air conditioned luxury coach, all admissions to attractions, fancy buffet lunch, CD disc of the tour including 36 photos taken by a photographer accompanying the tour guide, a Great Wall “hero” certificate, a pair of “climbing” shoes, and a travel bag. The price represented one-third off the regular price and furthermore, a family of four can go for the price of three.

That was for the deluxe tour. A standard tour of the same list of attractions but a plain lunch of eight dishes and one soup and a tee shirt and cap instead of shoes and bag went for half the price. And, the advertisements advised that the tours will not include any obligatory shopping stops.

I found out that many of the major tourist spots in China were heavily promoting local tourism. Hangzhou, for example, handed out vouchers to their own residents as well as to out-of-towners good for free admission to their seven most popular attractions. The cut rate package tours were apparently the way the Beijing Tourism Bureau was promoting their attractions.

Nationally, Beijing just announced the opening of two new high-speed rail segments, linking Wuhan to Shanghai and Taiyuan to Beijing. There are now 200 high speed trains running at over 200 miles per hours on the national network. The number of trains will quadruple in three years. This development will reduce the time and cost to travel and further encourage tourism.

The local acquaintances I talked to seemed generally optimistic that China will weather the economic crisis. They were more concerned as to how the U.S. will work through their challenges.

I asked my friends whether China will achieve the 8% increase in GDP as publicly stated by Premier Wen Jiabao, they merely shrugged and indicated that those government figures, one way or the other, do not mean much to them. It is how the local economy will be doing that they are watching.

Does High Seas Drama Spell America's Economic Doom?

The U.S. and Chinese military appeared to be engaged in a new round of brinksmanship. Eight years ago, a collision of planes occurred in the air over Hainan Island--this time, near collision of ships on the high seas near Hainan.

In both cases, the American side was engaged in “routine” surveillance and the Chinese side strenuously objected to being spied on. In the case of USNS Impeccable, Pentagon admitted that the ship was trolling for data on the development of China’s submarine base on the Hainan Island.

Pentagon said that the crew was made of civilians, as if that would render the mission benign—no doubt on same logic as hiring mercenaries in Iraq to lessen the appearance of American involvement.

The question is why would the Pentagon provoke an incident at a sensitive time when the Obama Administration is cultivating closer cooperation with Beijing for a host of reasons from international stability to economic recovery?

In late 2006, a Chinese submarine surfaced in midst of a flotilla surrounding the aircraft carrier, Kitty Hawk, to the surprise and embarrassment of the U.S. Navy for not even knowing the sub was there. Perhaps the Pentagon wished to have no more such surprises.

Another reason for the Pentagon action is to reinforce the justification needed for the amount Obama has set aside for defense, which at $663.7 billion is nearly half of the total national budget. Take away $130 billion for the two-front wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the budget still leaves over $530 billion for “advanced weapon systems development.”

The only other budgeted spending that seems remotely comparable to defense is the $633.8 billion Obama has set aside for national health care—but to be spent over 10 years, not one.

As we face mounting deficit, how can we justify spending such vast sum of money for weapon development, especially now that the former evil empire, USSR, has imploded? Perhaps Pentagon feels that a pumped up China as a potential threat will convince Congress that the same state of urgent threat continues.

China in its nuanced way has been trying to tell the Pentagon that China is not a participant in an arms race, but is merely satisfied to maintain a credible second strike capability to deter any other powers from entertaining funny ideas.

Surprising the Kitty Hawk flotilla was one way to tell the U.S. that China has silent running subs. Shooting down one of their old satellites was to provide another benchmark for the Pentagon.

In the mid 1990’s Chinese nuclear scientists were delighted to find Danny Stillman of Los Alamos, who was in charge of gathering intelligence on China’s nuclear weapon development. They invited Stillman to make numerous trips to China to visit their nuclear test and development centers so that he can accurately report on state of China’s nuclear weapons—a sort of reverse espionage to make sure the other party gets it right.

Unfortunately, Pentagon failed or did not want to comprehend China’s message but instead choose to consider each development as justification to work on even more deadly offensive weapons—as if Pentagon needs to absolutely overwhelm China’s capability. However, it seems intuitive that the expenditure required to develop a second strike capability is orders of magnitude less than it is to develop the offensive capability necessary to snuff out second strikes.

President Ronald Reagan has been largely credited with introducing the star wars strategy and convincing the Russians that they need keep up with the American level of spending for arms until suddenly the USSR discovered that they were bankrupted.

Now there is no one around to drive the Americans to bankruptcy but we seemed determined to spend into bankruptcy anyway. Perhaps Pentagon believes that they can borrow from the Chinese to finance the over the top defense budget?

An edited version is in New America Media.

Notes on Tunisia

Tunisia is a small nation sandwiched between two giant neighbors, Algeria and Libya. By some quirk of fate, this country shaped like an elongated seahorse was spared the heavy boot of colonialism and managed to maintain some semblance of self-identity as a protectorate of France. Some positive fallout of its relationship with France are that Tunisians make great tasting bread, croissants and pastries and most of the population have some fluency in French.

About a decade after WWII, Tunisia achieved its independence from France, more or less amicably with only a modicum amount of bloodshed. Since independence, the country has been blessed (or cursed depending on one’s point of view) with two strong national leaders. Bourguiba, (1903-2000) the first leader after independence, was a progressive who pushed the country to establish a national identity and modernize, provided free public education and enacted the emancipation of women. Whether his being educated in France and marrying a French woman had anything to do to influence his ideas is worthy of ponder. He also kept the country secular and a lid on the Islamic religious institutions from getting too powerful. In 1975, the National Assembly made an error of electing him president for life, not anticipating that he was to become senile within a decade.

Since Bourguiba lived to a ripe old age of 96, it was a good thing that his then prime minister, Ben Ali forcibly retired the president-for-life on November 7, 1987, and took over the presidency. There are now monuments in virtually every town square celebrating this date, most notably being the clock tower on Bourguiba Avenue, the main drag of the capital Tunis. Since then, Ben Ali has been successively re-elected to 5 year terms of office, president for life in effect though not in name. Ben Ali, ubiquitous portraits of his friendly smiling face everywhere, has basically continued his predecessor’s progressive policies and the country has enjoyed decades of stability.

With stability, Tunisia enjoyed a standard of living superior to its neighbors and the population seems generally content. The economy is growing at a healthy 5% per year and the population at around 1%. The steady loosening of Tunisia, the emphasis on stability and the drive to modernize seem reminiscent of Deng Xiao Ping’s pragmatic policies, except Bourguiba pre-dated Deng by more than two decades. Deng also studied in France in his early formative years. Perhaps there is something about France that is nurturing to progressive revolutionaries.

Sidi Bou Said

Twists and turns of Chen Shui-bian

Some months ago I speculated on various strategies that Chen Shui-bian was likely to adopt as he attempted to wriggle out of a mountain of corruption charges the Taiwan government was preparing against him. I alluded to classic Chinese strategies as the foundation to his possible escape from justice.

What I overlooked was a modern escape hatch not available in the ancient times in China, and that was to plead not guilty of corruption by reason of insanity. That his increasingly bizarre behavior seemed to suggest a planned or possibly genuine spiral towards total irrationality was recently proposed by a major daily in Taiwan.

Chen is the man many accused of orchestrating his own assassination attempt (obviously unsuccessfully) in a last minute ploy to squeeze out a win a hotly contested election. As president of Taiwan, Chen was also the leader who successfully convinced the people of Taiwan for 8 years that the tanking economy was of no consequence to their daily lives. That he can succeed in bamboozling Taiwan for so long suggests that pinning the criminal guilt on this slipperiest of politicians will be a test of Taiwan judiciary system.

Congressman John Conyers Speaks Out

Congressman John Conyers' recent blog advocated a non-partisan commission to examine whether the previous Bush Administration has been guilty of criminal wrong doing. The following are his concluding paragraphs for your information.

To me, the bottom line is this: If we move on now without fully documenting what occurred, without acknowledging the betrayal of our values, and without determining whether or not any laws have been broken, we cannot help but validate all that has gone on before. If we look at the Bush record and conclude that the book should simply be closed, we will be tacitly approving both the documented abuses and the additional misdeeds we will have chosen to leave uncovered.

That is why there is nothing partisan about the call for further review. In the end, these acts were not taken by George Bush, or by John Yoo, or even by Dick Cheney - they were taken by the United States of America. By all of us. There is no avoiding the responsibility we all bear for what has been done, and for what we choose to do next.

Our country has never been perfect. This would not be the first time we were forced to take a hard look at difficult choices made in times of peril. But when we have done so before, it has made us stronger, both by improving our policies and our practices and, more fundamentally, by strengthening our moral core and by breathing new life into the principles of our founding.

The responsible way forward requires us to look back as we go.

If you agree with Congressman Conyers, please let your congressional representatives know.