The Myth of Made-in-China (journal excerpt, February 2007)

This is a war about brand.

There’s an advertisement that plays across the CCTV (China Central Television) channels. A well-groomed Chinese celebrity sits in a theatre, speaking to the viewer about the hospitality China will extend to the world during the Olympics – words of etiquette and friendship that accompany moving images of good behaviour: one woman sharing an umbrella with another, caught unprepared in a sudden rainshower; a jogger pausing to pick up a plastic bottle and toss it in the recycle bin; a bus driver stopping to help an elderly man climb aboard. Such an advertisement speaks two messages: (1) This is the China we hope to show the world; (2) We fear the world won’t see this China. 

If we were to do an exercise in free word association of “China” among North American consumers, what words would come to mind? Cheap? Unreliable? Untrustworthy…in short, we’d hear a national brand of inferiority, originating from and reinforced daily in the pages and images of North America’s major news publications. 

To be sure, there is a foundation of truth for the stereotype. I would wager that half the advertisements on TV today in China make false claims about the products they tout. My favourite is the body suit that women can wear underneath their clothes to lose weight through body heat. And it’s not just about products; it’s about people. The recent news coverage of the Chinese drug agency czar who was executed for accepting corporate hand-outs in exchange for drug approvals is evidence, I believe, of endemic corruption throughout the state-controlled sector of the economy. An article in today’s Globe and Mail tells the story of a Chinese national – a wealthy entrepreneur – who faces imprisonment or death at home and is now seeking asylum in Canada. His crime? Fraudulent corporate practices which, according to the story, are so routine in dealings with government that to persecute a man on those grounds is pure hypocrisy. 

There is a pressure to produce. To stake a claim in the present gold-rush of commercial opportunity. To get something – anything – out to market and sell, sell, sell. 

And yet there’s another side to Chinese manufacture. After all, the entire line of Apple’s iPod products – possibly the most successful (profitable) consumer device in history – is made in China. China is the last stop -- the assembly centre -- for globally-integrated supply chains.  Anyone who’s read Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel knows that Chinese craft is responsible for some of the most important inventions of the past 2,000 years: paper, the compass, gunpowder. There is deep pride here. Pride in workmanship. A determination to do one’s best, and by one’s labours improve opportunity and welfare.

Made in China. “If you’re going to make a product in China, you’re better off hiding the fact.”  That's what one Jiangsu Province production house that sews bespoke menswear for Davies & Son on London's Savile Row advised. I disagree. One day, we need to move past this impression, and see through. One-and-a-third billion people – one-fifth of humanity – cannot be reduced to a single set of ideas. 

I guess that’s part of why we're here.