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2 Why all fakes lead to
China By Bright B Simons
They even fake dinosaurs.
The
counterfeit epidemic sweeping China is close to
getting out of hand, if it hasn't already. Nothing
adds color to this view better than the hoard upon
hoard of fake fossils being carted out of China
daily for sale to natural-history exhibitors in
the West; the counterfeit prehistoric remnants are
so good even top experts in
the
trade and their scientific consultants are fooled.
There is something a bit geeky about
faking dinosaur remains. One may even, tongue in
cheek, concede that it spices up a rather dull
industry. But as everybody by now knows, China's
master forgers don't stick to Jurassic sculptures.
Their hand has been discerned, directly or
indirectly, in the death of at least 200,000 of
their own countrymen - that's an annual count for
the only year, 2001, for which a comprehensive
estimate is available - from fake medicines.
In fact, they appear to have very bad
taste: they will forge anything. US authorities
reckon that at least four out of every five fake
items on sale in the West can be traced back to
the smart guys in the southern province of
Guangdong and elsewhere in China.
So why
are these guys so good? Why are concerted efforts
to clamp down on their nefarious activities
resulting in their simply moving to diversify
their expertise? What accounts for their
remarkable success?
It is much too easy
just to put it all down to the deep roots of
organized criminal behavior in clan culture
through the ancient codes of the triads. After
all, the question resembles another oft-asked one:
Why is the Sicilian mafia so resilient? In that
context, amateur sociologists will feel drawn to
notions of "alternative moral systems" and a
"culture of crime" perpetuated through unusually
dense family networks, such that, perhaps, the
counterfeit situation in China could be nailed
down to a case of "cultural pathology".
Some even go further, to conflate the
counterfeit phenomenon with other widely
perceived, deviant social trends in China, such as
rampant exam cheating, the avalanche of fake
professional credentials, generally lax
enforcement of standards in public life, and what
is said to be a growing cynicism among,
especially, youth about law and order. Those who
hold such views of course assert that while,
admittedly, none of these perceptions can be
confined to observations of Chinese society, they
are nevertheless exceptionally pronounced in
China's contemporary experience.
Who is to
say, though? Any basis for comparing societies to
one another that relies on such subjective
criteria as the rate of cynicism among youth,
public integrity and implicit accusations of a
culture of graft or corruption must be asserted
rather than evidenced.
If one is, however,
looking for an objective set of contributory
factors to the growth of the counterfeit
phenomenon in China, it will probably be more
prudent to search in other, more evidence-laden
directions.
Some time ago, the author of
this article conducted a non-scientific study that
established highly suggestive links between abrupt
or massive transfers by major manufacturers of
production capacity from their original production
sites to newly - one must hesitate to say
"hastily" - set-up platforms in China and
subsequent mass recall of products. The
correlations were less robust when the analysis
was broadened to cover East Asia, immediately
prompting caution about any inference that
outsourcing per se is the most interesting feature
in the scene.
Yet still a number of the
most intriguing correlations make the temptation
hard to resist.
Ever since Sony began
expanding its plants in the central east-coast
province of Jiangsu, somewhat mirroring
Hitachi-Maxell's mass shift of its lithium-ion
battery-manufacturing processes to China, and
started to move more of its production capacity
from Japan to China, that company has been plagued
with one recall problem after the other. So also
has Matsushita, owner of Panasonic.
Canon,
in 2005, made the decision to shift most of its
production from its Japanese plants to Jiangsu,
breaking a long relationship with Italy's Olivetti
SpA. The following year it recalled an
unprecedented 140,000 copiers.
LG Philips'
dramatic expansion of its LCD (liquid crystal
display) fabrication plants in China in 2004 was
followed in 2006 by massive recalls of tens of
thousands of flat-panel televisions.
Motorola took action in 2001 to transfer a
huge range of its manufacturing processes to
Tianjin municipality in northeastern China. In
2002, the company began issuing recalls for
millions of products.
In 2004, the
California technology company Xilinx begun a
complex sourcing and investment process that
portended a shifting of parts of its central
supply chains from Taiwan to mainland China, and
even anticipated a physical manufacturing
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