Made In China

[Tim the Tank Nut]

Kroger in our area just gave everyone a $2 per hour raise...

[Mikel2]

Kroger in our area just gave everyone a $2 per hour raise...

I would be happy to pay extra so that people who deal with the public get a substantial raise.

[lucklucky]

 

Excellent news, profiteering, means that many more will appear and the price will drop and the numbers available will increase. I see that here some are still following the US Army of occupation in Germany...

 

Profiteering transcends international boundaries, unfortunately.

 

 

So proteccionism that started the Great Depression wonderful. And how was Italian economy at beginning of WW2 after 6 years of autarky?

 

Edited April 4, 2020 by lucklucky

[Nobu]

With not much to go by other than having seen The Bicycle Thief multiple times, not very well.

[Sardaukar]

When it comes to masks etc.... Recently Chinese government revoked export licence to Europe from most of the 110+ factories, only 21 retained CE standard licence.

 

This is because most of the masks were found to be substandard.

[MiloMorai]

When it comes to masks etc.... Recently Chinese government revoked export licence to Europe from most of the 110+ factories, only 21 retained CE standard licence.

 

This is because most of the masks were found to be substandard.

Could those masks be used by the general public?

[Sardaukar]

 

When it comes to masks etc.... Recently Chinese government revoked export licence to Europe from most of the 110+ factories, only 21 retained CE standard licence.

 

This is because most of the masks were found to be substandard.

Could those masks be used by the general public?

 

 

Most likely they could. Just that not appruved for medical use.

[Jeff]

Xi fears Japan-led manufacturing exodus from China

The year of the metal rat returns every 60 years -- and brings calamity with it

KATSUJI NAKAZAWA, Nikkei senior staff writer

APRIL 16, 2020 04:20 JST

 

TOKYO -- Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has proposed building an economy that is less dependent on one country, China, so that the nation can better avoid supply chain disruptions.

 

The call touched off a heated debate in the Chinese political world.

 

In Zhongnanhai, the area in central Beijing where leaders of the Chinese Communist Party and the state government have their offices, "there are now serious concerns over foreign companies withdrawing from China," a Chinese economic source said. "What has particularly been talked about is the clause in Japan's emergency economic package that encourages (and funds) the re-establishment of supply chains."

 

Had the pandemic not struck, Chinese President Xi Jinping's maiden state visit to Japan would have been wrapped up by now with Xi proudly declaring a "new era" of Sino-Japanese relations. He would have cheered on Abe as Japan prepared for the next big event, the 2020 Olympics.

 

Instead, both Xi's trip and the Tokyo Olympics have been postponed, and Sino-Japanese relations find themselves at a crossroads.

 

Signals of Abe's new policy were visible as early as March 5.

 

Japan had finally been able to put the Diamond Princess cruise ship disaster behind it but was still snowed under by the challenge of preventing the virus's further spread.

 

On that date, coincidentally the same day the postponement of Xi's Japan visit was announced, the Japanese government held a meeting of the Council on Investments for the Future. Abe, who chairs the council, said he wanted high value-added product manufacturing bases to come home to Japan.

 

At the table were influential business leaders such as Hiroaki Nakanishi, chairman of the Japan Business Federation, the country's biggest business lobby better known as Keidanren.

 

"Due to the coronavirus, fewer products are coming from China to Japan," Abe said. "People are worried about our supply chains."

Of the products that rely heavily on a single country for manufacturing, "we should try to relocate high added value items to Japan," the leader said. "And for everything else, we should diversify to countries like those in ASEAN."

 

Abe's remarks were clear. They came as disruptions hit the procurement of auto parts and other products for which Japan relies on China, seriously impacting corporate Japan's activities.

 

And they asked for something more than the traditional "China plus one" concept, in which companies add a non-China location to diversify production.

 

Abe was forming a "shift away from China" policy.

 

With the nation transfixed by coronavirus coverage, the proposal failed to generate big headlines in Japan.

But China was watching carefully, perhaps wondering whether it was about to undergo an industrial hollowing-out like Japan once experienced.

 

Such a trend would shake the foundation of China's long-standing growth model.

 

In its emergency economic package adopted on April 7, the Japanese government called for the re-establishment of supply chains that have been hit by the virus's proliferation. It earmarked more than 240 billion yen (about $2.2 billion) in its supplementary budget plan for fiscal 2020 to assist domestic companies to move production back home or to diversify their production bases into Southeast Asia. It is a tidy sum of money.

 

The next day, April 8, China's Politburo Standing Committee, the party's top decision-making body, held a meeting in Beijing.

 

Speaking at the meeting, President Xi said that "as the pandemic continues its global spread, the world economy faces a mounting downside risk." He added, "Unstable and uncertain factors are notably increasing."

 

Xi, who doubles as the party's general secretary, stressed the need to stick to "bottom-line thinking" -- which means assuming the worst -- and called for "preparedness in mind and work to cope with prolonged external environment changes."

 

The seven-member Politburo Standing Committee usually meets once a week, and it is rare for the holding and content of these meetings to be reported.

 

Xi sounded the call to prepare for "a protracted battle" while assuming the worst.

 

There are talks in the U.S. regarding China dependency.

 

Larry Kudlow, chairman of the White House's National Economic Council, has expressed his intention to consider shouldering the relocation costs of American companies returning home from China.

 

It fits with President Donald Trump's "America first" agenda.

 

If the U.S. and Japan, the world's biggest and third-biggest economies respectively, move away from China, it will have a huge impact on the world's second-biggest economy.

 

One topic has now set tongues wagging in the world of Chinese intellectuals. According to the Chinese astrology chart, 2020 is the year of Geng-Zi, or the metal rat, which comes once every 60 years.

 

It is said that every time the year of the metal rat rolls around a big history-shaking incident takes place.

 

In 1840, during the Qing dynasty, the Opium War broke out, leading to China's stagnation for more than a century.

 

Sixty years later, in 1900, toward the end of the Qing dynasty, forces from an alliance of eight nations -- the U.K., U.S., Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Japan and Austria-Hungary -- moved from Tianjin to Beijing, an incident triggered by the Boxer Rebellion, which had started in 1899.

 

"55 Days at Peking" is an American film starring Charlton Heston and depicting the siege of the foreign legations' compounds in Peking, now known as Beijing, during the Boxer Rebellion.

 

The metal rat's next return, in 1960, coincided with a famine caused by the Great Leap Forward led by Mao Zedong, the founding father of "a new China," or the People's Republic of China.

 

Yang Jisheng, a former journalist for Xinhua News Agency who lost his foster father to the famine, later authored "Tombstone," a detailed reportage about the epic disaster.

 

Based on field work and interviews, Yang revealed that as many as 36 million people died of hunger during the Great Leap Forward, far more than China once announced.

 

What will this year's metal rat jinx be like for China?

 

The peak of China's coronavirus outbreak has passed. But Zhang Wenhong, the head of a coronavirus clinical expert team whose profile has been on the rise, has said a second round of infections will hit in November or later.

 

During the 1918-1920 Spanish flu pandemic, the second wave of infections was more serious than the first. No pandemic has been more deadly since then. Estimates are that 500 million people, a third of the planet's population, were infected and that 50 million died.

 

Zhong Nanshan, an 83-year-old medical doctor, has shined since 2003, when he played a major role in the fight against severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

 

The new coronavirus has already mutated, and its death rate has reached levels up to 20 times higher than that for influenza, Zhong has warned.

 

The new virus emerged in China late last year and then spread globally. China's crackdown on information and social media posts regarding the outbreak through mid-January and its delayed initial response to the public health crisis ended up contributing to a catastrophe and sparking an international uproar.

 

Trump had been calling the coronavirus "the Chinese virus," although he has since stopped doing so.

 

Global public opinion will greatly affect the re-establishment of a post-virus world order. As things stand now, those moving to take the initiative are the U.S. and China.

 

In ancient China, bamboo strips were the main canvas for documents before the introduction of paper. They were called "green logs" because bamboo strips are green before they are cured and sewn into books.

 

Bamboo strips are official documents that are kept for posterity, and it was important for an emperor to inscribe his name on them.

If the scourge of the coronavirus were to drastically change the world order in the 21st century, will it be the U.S. or China that inscribes the bamboo strips? China cannot afford to lose.

 

Much will depend on how the U.S. and China rebuild their respective virus-hit economies. If major foreign companies withdraw from China, it will become a big drag on the Middle Kingdom's economic revival.

 

Katsuji Nakazawa is a Tokyo-based senior staff writer and editorial writer at Nikkei. He has spent seven years in China as a correspondent and later as China bureau chief. He is the 2014 recipient of the Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist prize for international reporting.

 

https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/China-up-close/Xi-fears-Japan-led-manufacturing-exodus-from-China?fbclid=IwAR1SGa-VJGR-fUY8t04cnXSTaxQbUv9u_SCsUIYiQDEGRZkxvB1uiragWoA

 

 

[Nobu]

Nakazawa's voice is to be respected I think, along with his views of their history.

 

Good article.

[Martin M]

Construction / Repair of bridge in Leverkusen delayed because of faulty steel constrution elements " Made in China " .

That´s reasuring: if they found some faulty how many just make the grade or slip thru or get slipped thru.

Buying cheap stuff again. Money is needed for other things.

[Murph]

Take it all away from China, send it to the US, Taiwan, Japan, etc. Let China rot.

[Mikel2]

Take it all away from China, send it to the US, Taiwan, Japan, etc. Let China rot.

I think we are now finding out how influential China has become in all kinds of international institutions.

[bojan]

Well, US and Europe enabled them to be.

[Murph]

Well, US and Europe enabled them to be.

You are right. Our previous leaders are to blame, the globalist BS.

[bojan]

And it is not about people buying cheep crap on Ali, it is about whole factories being moved there. But that was explained as capitalism and market economy.

[RETAC21]

And it is not about people buying cheep crap on Ali, it is about whole factories being moved there. But that was explained as capitalism and market economy.

 

It is, but the driver is the consumer who prefers cheap stuff made abroad than expensive stuff made locally, for the same performance. The error is not Capitalism but letting the PRC play according to their own rules (FX manipulation, price fixing, etc) that enabled them to kill competition.

[EchoFiveMike]

Meh, the driver is rootless money grubbers who place the lootz ahead of every other factor, including the welfare of the society they reside in. Hence, they should be expelled from that society. More tariffs, less mass migration, more deportations. S/F...Ken M

Edited April 21, 2020 by EchoFiveMike

[Jeff]

BUYER BEWARE

How China’s Mask Diplomacy Backfired

CHARLES DUNST

Published on: April 15, 2020

 

Its defective “gifts” reflect a defective regime—and the world is beginning to notice.

 

After letting the novel coronavirus loose on the world, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is now making its case for global leadership. The Chinese Embassy in Rome claims to have donated 2 million masks, along with ventilators and protective suits, to Italy. China reportedly provided Spain with medical aid and advisors. A CCP-friendly Chinese-Malaysian outlet proclaimed that China was donating 10 million masks to Malaysia.

 

Chinese state media has emphasized the purported strength of the CCP’s response, using this new “Health Silk Road” to portray China as a trustworthy torchbearer amid a crisis that is engulfing the West. And while this narrative has found purchase in mainstream Western media, many claims of Chinese charity are easily debunked. China is not donating but selling ventilators, face masks, COVID-19 tests, and other medical supplies to Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Northern Ireland, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Qatar, Serbia, and Austria, among other countries. Meanwhile, many of these supplies are defective.

 

China, however, is not the only country to show some altruism: Leaders in Washington, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, and Hanoi have all donated supplies to countries in need. And while the United States’s domestic response has been poor, this impacts only Americans; it is not U.S. lies that allowed the virus to spread, nor are American medical materials failing abroad. It’s apparent, despite prominent Western claims to the opposite effect, that China’s coronavirus-era diplomacy evinces no epochal shift to Chinese global leadership. On the contrary, the coronavirus crisis may wake the world up to the CCP’s defects, fatally undermining Beijing’s campaign for international authority.

 

As the virus began to spread in Wuhan, the CCP repressed medical professionals who raised the alarm. State media for months ignored the virus’s spread. China, rather than buy the world time, as a recent New York Times opinion piece proclaimed, allowed the virus’s spread, preventing the world from hoping to eliminate or even contain the pandemic.

 

Still, the CCP is now trying to take a public victory lap—all while wielding the West’s economic decline to seek more foreign direct investment, seize market share in critical industries, and stop the West from confronting its bad behavior. Publicly, however, Beijing is presenting a politics of generosity, donating or selling necessary goods to a world reeling from the CCP’s failures.

 

China, despite hoarding medical supplies in February, controls the means of medical production: The country produced half of the world’s masks before the coronavirus’s emergence, and it has expanded production nearly 12-fold since then. China accounts for 40 percent of the world’s imports of face shields, protective garments and equipment, gloves, and goggles. And while China’s exports of protective equipment fell in early 2020, this drop was not as precipitous as feared. The country is now ramping up production of medical supplies and pharmaceutical ingredients, according to Horizon Advisory, a consultancy that tracks Chinese government and economic activity.

 

“It is possible to turn the crisis into an opportunity,” Han Jian of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Ministry of Civil Affairs’s China Industrial Economics Association wrote on March 4, according to Horizon. “To increase the trust and the dependence of all countries around the world of ‘Made in China.’”

 

This effort is not exactly opaque.

 

In late March, the Chinese government made the first move in Helsinki, approaching their Finnish counterparts and offering to sell protective face masks. State-friendly media Xinhua on March 28 extolled the Chinese government for doing the same in Croatia, “offer[ing] convenience for it to purchase medical supplies from China”; on March 30, 12.5 tons of Chinese medical equipment arrived in Zagreb.

 

China has already sold $467 million in medical supplies to Spain, a million face masks and 100 testing kits to Slovakia, three million face masks, protective gear, and 86 ventilators to Hungary, 17 tons of medical supplies to Indonesia, and 150,000 testing kits to the Czech Republic.

 

And while Chinese businessman Jack Ma appears to actually be donating medical goods across the Global South, the CCP is trying to take credit for this generosity by labeling him “China’s Jack Ma.” The CCP’s efforts to claim Ma seem to stem from the failures of official state sales and donations.

 

To export certain types of masks to the United States, both the masks and the Chinese company must meet National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health requirements. International law firm Harris Bricken says that about 90 percent of the certifications they have seen so far were fake.

 

Issues of this sort are evident across the globe.

 

Some 80 percent of the masks the Czech Republic purchased from China for around $600,000 are defective. Chinese rapid-testing kits sold to Spain had only 30 percent sensitivity, as opposed to the 80 percent level expected. (The Chinese government sought to separate itself from the company in question, claiming the tests were not approved for exports.) The Netherlands has since recalled 600,000 defective masks it purchased from China. Turkey recently rejected an unknown number of Chinese testing kits after they yielded inaccurate results. Georgia suspended its agreement with a Chinese company after receiving 1,000 substandard rapid-testing kits.

 

Similar failures are evident even in Beijing’s gifts. China donated 100,000 test kits to the Philippines, which soon after discarded those that were only 40 percent accurate. Given that many of the recipients of China’s benefactions—such as those in Phnom Penh, Tehran, Caracas, and beyond—are either autocratic or politically unstable, it’s evident that China’s deficiencies could remain under wraps. It’s unclear, for instance, what or how many supplies China gave Iran, but the Islamic Republic will not dare to publicly admit their likely inadequacy. The world is unlikely to ever know the breadth of China’s exported negligence, but contemporary reports seem to be only the tip of the iceberg.

 

This is a standard struggle for China and one that constantly undermines its global efforts. Members of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s Marshall Plan-like state-backed global investment and marketing campaign, are constantly frustrated by the poor quality goods and derelict firms that China sends their way. The CCP, however, is sticking to its playbook as the pandemic rages, seeking to enhance China’s global clout by exporting or donating goods of which it has a domestic overcapacity.

 

But China is not the only country offering assistance. France sent 1 million masks and 200,000 protective suits to Italy; an aide to French President Emmanuel Macron later chastised China-praising Italian leaders for “EU-bashing.” (Italian opposition politician Matteo Salvini, on the other hand, described China’s response to the outbreak as a “crime against humanity.”) Germany donated medical supplies to Italy, also taking patients from that country and France. In relative silence, France and Germany have given more masks to Italy than China sold to that country.

 

The United States, meanwhile, promised up to $100 million of aid to China and other countries affected by the pandemic. The State Department in February donated nearly 18 tons of medical supplies to China, including masks, gowns, gauze, and respirators. Around the same time, Canada sent some 50,000 face shields and other materials—from the country’s own reserves—to China. Japan donated 3 million masks to China, while Japanese companies and cities also sent supplies.

 

South Korea and Taiwan have donated or pledged to donate masks to the United States, as well as tests to the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates. Singapore sent 3,000 test kits and other supplies to the Philippines. The European Union days ago announced a €93 million package to help Serbia fight coronavirus—even after Belgrade jubilantly received Chinese experts. Austria is sending 1.6 million masks to Italy. Vietnam offered $200,000 in medical aid to Cambodia and Laos. Vladimir Putin’s Russia donated 1,500 test kits to North Korea, while Communist Cuba sent doctors to Italy.

 

Complaints about these donations, like those that dog China, have yet to surface.

 

The CCP’s so-called “mask diplomacy” is evidently having at best only moderate success. What’s more, in Africa and the Middle East, the virus’s Chinese origins are fueling a “counter-narrative to the official version of China as a development model and emerging public goods provider.”

 

The world may welcome China’s masks and tests, but reports of their failure will certainly not prevent leaders of already China-skeptical countries from seeking accountability for the CCP’s exacerbation of this catastrophe. This crisis could even prompt some to reconsider their Chinese alliances.

 

Indeed, the CCP cannot even tamp down domestic fury; its diplomatic efforts will certainly not instill global acceptance of a “Made in China” world now.

 

“China started this crisis. But now, they are selling medical equipment, testing kits, masks and emerging as some sort of heroes that will save us all. China is selling. Let me underline the sale part here,” Lídia Pereira, a Portuguese member of the European Parliament, recently tweeted. “China is not saving us by selling bad quality equipment.”

Charles Dunst is an associate at LSE IDEAS, the London School of Economics’ foreign policy think tank, and a journalist who has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Foreign Policy, among other publications. Twitter: @CharlesDunst..

 

https://www.the-american-interest.com/2020/04/15/how-chinas-mask-diplomacy-backfired/

 

 

[Simon Tan]

Apple.

[Jeff]

But hey, look at the deal we got!

 

Canada: 1 million respirators acquired from China unfit for coronavirus fight
Canada's public health authority says around one million KN95 respirators acquired from China have failed to meet federal Covid-19 standards for use by frontline health professionals.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/23/canada-china-respirators-coronavirus-205461

 

 

[NickM]

Apple.

I don't own 'em. Too frikken expensive.

[JasonJ]

But hey, look at the deal we got!

 

 

 

Canada: 1 million respirators acquired from China unfit for coronavirus fight

Canada's public health authority says around one million KN95 respirators acquired from China have failed to meet federal Covid-19 standards for use by frontline health professionals.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/23/canada-china-respirators-coronavirus-205461

 

It's pretty stunning how so much of their "donations" or sold Wuhan virus medical equipment turns out to be faulty.

[EchoFiveMike]

In the automotive world, you buy the rough forgings from China(let them fuck up their environment), perform pitiless analysis to make sure they didn't swindle you on materials and then do all the machine work yourself, using American and/or Japanese machines run by actual American men. You can have the minorities and/or women do the packaging to meet your mandatory diversity quotas and yet not go broke from too many fucked up parts. S/F....Ken M

[Jeff]

 

But hey, look at the deal we got!

 

 

Canada: 1 million respirators acquired from China unfit for coronavirus fight

Canada's public health authority says around one million KN95 respirators acquired from China have failed to meet federal Covid-19 standards for use by frontline health professionals.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/23/canada-china-respirators-coronavirus-205461

It's pretty stunning how so much of their "donations" or sold Wuhan virus medical equipment turns out to be faulty.

 

 

Indeed and some of the good stuff they're selling is stuff that was donated to them by the countries (looking at you Italy) they're selling them back to.

[Jeff]

In the automotive world, you buy the rough forgings from China(let them fuck up their environment), perform pitiless analysis to make sure they didn't swindle you on materials and then do all the machine work yourself, using American and/or Japanese machines run by actual American men. You can have the minorities and/or women do the packaging to meet your mandatory diversity quotas and yet not go broke from too many fucked up parts. S/F....Ken M

 

That's a key, relentless testing to make sure they aren't scamming you on production items after showing an acceptable prototype. Their attitude is that it isn't their job to comply with the contract parameters if you aren't going to keep them honest. If they catch you looking away, they'll swap in garbage. It's your fault for not catching them. They can do good work in some cases but only if they need to.