A couple of status updates from a friend of mine that lives in China:

Even Chinese styrofoam bowls suck. I just had one disintegrate in my hand. Good thing the contents were inside a plastic bag. I quickly grabbed a German styrofoam one and saved the whole dish. 'Quality' is not translatable into Chinese. It might as well be an idiom.

I had a belt I bought in China fall to the floor from a chair, about a foot and the buckle smashed into pieces! I thought all my change fell on the floor. I bought a shirt in Jingdezhen. Put in on and it disintegrated the first time I wore it. I had a stapler (yes a stapler) disintegrate in my hand, too. I even bought a flashlight from Walmart that I had to 're-buy' because IT decided to commit suicide, too.

Oh, and did I mention that after a 400RMB root canal and 'crown' it fell out 2 weeks later while I was on the bus...

Scary indeed. I wonder - is this what happens when you fuel bubbles with a persistently devalued currency?

The angles our government has engaged have been all wrong - we've been chastising them for a devalued currency because it causes trade imbalances. I would think Chinese policy makers might be a bit more receptive to evidence that currency manipulation causes economic (and political) instability. The upper class can and have sensibly protected themselves by investing in foreign currencies and equities. It hurts those who can't hedge against yuan devaluation (lower and middle class) the most. If the economic and political situation gets nasty enough for the lower and middle classes, the Chinese state will be forced to nationalize foreign assets held by Chinese nationals, and then where are they going to be? I'll tell you exactly where: living in a van down by the river!

jaylectricity: A couple of status updates from a friend of mine that lives in China:

Even Chinese styrofoam bowls suck. I just had one disintegrate in my hand. Good thing the contents were inside a plastic bag. I quickly grabbed a German styrofoam one and saved the whole dish. 'Quality' is not translatable into Chinese. It might as well be an idiom.

I had a belt I bought in China fall to the floor from a chair, about a foot and the buckle smashed into pieces! I thought all my change fell on the floor. I bought a shirt in Jingdezhen. Put in on and it disintegrated the first time I wore it. I had a stapler (yes a stapler) disintegrate in my hand, too. I even bought a flashlight from Walmart that I had to 're-buy' because IT decided to commit suicide, too.

Oh, and did I mention that after a 400RMB root canal and 'crown' it fell out 2 weeks later while I was on the bus...

400 RMB ~= $60 you get what you pay for.

jaylectricity: Oh, and did I mention that after a 400RMB root canal and 'crown' it fell out 2 weeks later while I was on the bus...

I've seen some Chinese root canals. They would be considered a pulpotomy here (think a temporary start of a root canal). Shiatty crowns too. But then again, I've seen some things here too, so...........

For years after WWII, "Made in Japan" was equivalent to "piece of shiat".

The powers-that-be in Japan realized that they needed to begin producing high-quality goods they could be *proud* of.

In a relatively short time, the Japanese succeeded. I expect the Chinese will soon get a clue and follow the same trajectory. The market will tell...

gopher321: As far as quality goes, I'm glad eBay has a feature that blocks items outside of North America to be displayed - I find it more and more necessary to filter out the crap from China (sadly, it blocks items from Europe as well). Last Chinese item I bought was a pair of scissors that lasted about a month before the handle broke and blades were rusting.

My wife (a naturalized US Citizen, but born and raised in China for the first 28 year of her life) refuses to buy anything made in China if she can avoid it because of the quality concerns. She also will not even consider moving back to China because of the environmental catastrophe China has become..

jaylectricity: A couple of status updates from a friend of mine that lives in China:

Even Chinese styrofoam bowls suck. I just had one disintegrate in my hand. Good thing the contents were inside a plastic bag. I quickly grabbed a German styrofoam one and saved the whole dish. 'Quality' is not translatable into Chinese. It might as well be an idiom.

I had a belt I bought in China fall to the floor from a chair, about a foot and the buckle smashed into pieces! I thought all my change fell on the floor. I bought a shirt in Jingdezhen. Put in on and it disintegrated the first time I wore it. I had a stapler (yes a stapler) disintegrate in my hand, too. I even bought a flashlight from Walmart that I had to 're-buy' because IT decided to commit suicide, too.

Oh, and did I mention that after a 400RMB root canal and 'crown' it fell out 2 weeks later while I was on the bus...

What are they making this shiat out of, marzipan?

Sounds good!

ChingChongChang!

KarmicDisaster: Azmodan Kijur: KarmicDisaster: It is really hard to tell what is actually going on in China because all of the official figures are fabrications to make China's economy look better than it is, and because of the difficulty in factoring in corruption which is maybe a third of their economy. It is hard to even get an idea of what the real unemployment rate is for example. All we know for sure are the export numbers since we buy the stuff.

Even that is a bit suspect, given that the balance of trade across the planet is off by $332 billion. Someone is cooking the books somewhere and a good candidate (not accusing though) is China.

Yeah, I read about that, countries are spinning their import and export figures to make their economies look healthier. I have a family member that just got back from China where they were trying to do a research project on an aspect of this, but it is almost impossible to get any real data on anything. They may be heading for a huge crash and don't know it themselves since each sector lies to the next, but it is really hard to know. What is amusing is that China has been divesting itself of US bonds, and reducing their hoard of dollars and now the Euro is going to pop. Oops.

That's the biggest problem with China's economy. No one, not even the Chinese, really know what's going on there. Every single supplier of any good lies to every single purchaser of any good, and the middlemen lie to both sides and any corner that can be cut, has been, often to the other side of the safety margin.

What's scarier is that the central bank is lowering the amount of reserve banks are required to have to 16%. Of course, that just means the banks have to say they have 16% reserve, not that they actually need to have that money. If there were a run on the banks in China, their entire economy would collapse overnight. If it looked like there would be a run on the banks, the government would have no problem shooting anyone who decided to take their money out. It could get very hairy, very quickly.

The $62,000,000,000,000 question is what happens when China's economy, and potentially government, falters? Is that good news for the economies of Europe and the United States? Are the Chinese crazy enough to do something stupid like start a war to prop up their economy and better maintain control of their populace?

(Prediction: In 50 years, China will be more-or-less democratic with a reasonable body of civil law, environmental protection, worker protections, etc, or it will be split into regional, warlord-controlled states. In either case, manufacturing will have moved to another country that doesn't mind going through massive environmental and human rights catastrophes.)

meyerkev: Azmodan Kijur: the balance of trade across the planet is off by $332 billion

????

When you add up all the exports reported by all the countries and subtract all the imports reported by all countries, then we've apparently shipped $332 billion in goods off the planet somehow. Or, you know, someone's lying about how much they've been exporting or importing.

KarmicDisaster: Lord Dimwit:
What's scarier is that the central bank is lowering the amount of reserve banks are required to have to 16%. Of course, that just means the banks have to say they have 16% reserve, not that they actually need to have that money. If there were a run on the banks in China, their entire economy would collapse overnight. If it looked like there would be a run on the banks, the government would have no problem shooting anyone who decided to take their money out. It could get very hairy, very quickly.


Yes, this exactly is what happened in the US, banks lobbied and got the government to lower the reserve rate because uh, socialism, and then later when they were stressed almost all started to croak and needed secret bailouts.

Well, except for the shooting part and the fact that the United States can, in theory, afford the secret bailouts.

(Can afford them, if they are accompanied by reasonable increases in regulation to prevent that sort of thing from happening again.)

(You know, like the regulations we created during and after the Great Depression. The ones that worked really well until the S&L crises in the 80s and the further deregulation in the 90's and 00's. The deregulation that somehow was...better? Because...socialism?)