August 28, 2007
Simply a Stage of Capitalist Development
A nation of outlaws, by Stephen Mihm
Professor Mihm offers some “much-needed perspective.”
“What’s happening halfway around the world may be disturbing, even disgraceful, but it’s hardly foreign. A century and a half ago, another fast-growing nation had a reputation for sacrificing standards to its pursuit of profit, and it was the United States.
As with China and Harry Potter, America was a hotbed of literary piracy; like China’s poisonous pet-food makers, American factories turned out adulterated foods and willfully mislabeled products. Indeed, to see China today is to glimpse, in a distant mirror, the 19th-century American economy in all its corner-cutting, fraudulent glory.”
Cat: | Time: 10:25 am (utc+8)
August 28th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Man, I tell people this all the time and just get frowns and shaken heads in response. They either don’t believe me or think China is somehow different. It’s simply the abuses of the Industrial Revolution all over again. The market will correct this situation very quickly.
August 28th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Read court cases from the late 1800s, turn of the century.
Arsenic and lead food coloring. Chalk mixed into water and sold as milk. Sawdust mixed with flour and baked into stuff. The FDA was created for a reason. The Jungle and all that.
August 29th, 2007 at 12:41 am
BMW CEO Fuming Over Chinese Knock-Off Of Popular X5 SUV. (Pics)
August 31st, 2007 at 1:22 am
Historical comparisons of this kind are irrelevant and frankly ridiculous. The world has moved on. There has been 150 years of development of the idea of intellectual property since then. The basic concepts did not exist at that time as they do today. So China can simply ignore them as a “stage of development”? If they begin burning people at the stake for witchcraft would this be ok since it is a “stage of development” the West also went through?
August 31st, 2007 at 2:43 am
China essentially was “burning people at the stake for witchcraft” during the Cultural Revolution.
I don’t think anyone is saying that it is ok for China to ignore global standards, but I think it is only fair to give the Chinese some time to figure out the problems and implement better standards.
I don’t see how historical comparisons of this kind are irrelevant and ridiculous. The world has moved on, but the fact is that the majority of the Chinese population was not part of that process. Most have only been fully exposed to capitalism in the past two decades.
If it is “simply a stage of capitalist development”, it’ll be helpful to offer the Chinese historic examples and suggestions that can target the problems and narrow the gap, rather than throw around political and trade threats.
August 31st, 2007 at 7:05 am
Brian: good call on the burning of witches, i didn’t think through my historical comparison deeply enough.
However, it is simply not true to say that they do not know what they are doing. Ignorance may have been an excuse 20 years ago, but not today. The people I have known in China that are involved in these processes know exactly what they are doing and simply could not care less.