Since we are talking about media distortions
UPDATE: I find that this post published on the Spiked: Challenging China-bashing is much more scientific, detailed and convincing on the relevant issue, and you are strongly urged to check it out.
Media distortion when it comes to Chinese issues didn’t start after the recent outbreak of the Tibet issue. As I mentioned, Chinese overseas reach their conviction that western media is not much better than their counterpart in China through years and decades living experience in the west. Most who have lived in the west for less than 3 years are usually more pro-west. They are still in the period of being impressed by the freedom the western media enjoy, and about to enter the phase when they realize that invisible hands are behind the stage.
Take the Chinese toy scandal we observed not so long ago for instance. All of sudden, the topic was among the headlines of almost all American major news media. You watched them talking about China poisoning the west for hours and hours everyday, read all sorts of elaborated articles, and heard all kinds of self-justified proposals of refusing all Chinese products. “Experts” of all sorts stepped onto the stage joining the chorus bashing China and making stimulating statements.
There, you heard how many millions of toys made in China were recalled last year. Quite a scary number! Here is the one serious flaw however. What is the total number of all toys made in China during the same time? Because, without this vital piece of information, “millions”, huge numbers as they are, contain zero information. Try it and you won’t find this second number in any major news media, including CNN.
You realize why if you read Chinese forums. It was claimed there that the recall rate, the relative ratio between the amounts of the toys recalled and manufactured, was just about the industrial average. Nothing impressive. Guess why those “experts”, showing off their sincere and caring faces on CNN and the kind, didn’t think of it a news-worthy number, and therefore very conveniently ignored it?
There was percentage being told though. It was said that about some 80%* of all the toys being recalled were made in China. Once again, we saw the same trick being played: what is the percentage of ALL toys that were manufactured in China during the same time? Because if 80% toys were manufactured in China and 80% recalled toys were also manufacture in China, then China was doing just fine. If, however, 90% of all toys were manufactured in China, China was actually doing a better job.
That number you wouldn’t hear on their hourly news reports and “in-depth” discussion sessions.
So, tell me, those experts, making fancy speeches and writing elegant columns, most have advanced college degrees, are they really morons? Do they really have no common sense at all when they were so self-justified badmouthing China in front of the cameras? Maybe they can excuse themselves for saying that they were never good at math in high schools. Or, for Americans, maybe they could just say even though they were straight-A students, they still had trouble with divisions between large numbers.
But seriously, did they knew it all but intentionally omit the “inconvenient” information to advance their propaganda and secure their jobs? To most of us, the answer was obvious.
That probably was why we saw the chair of the American toy company Mattel went to China and publicly apologized to the Chinese officials, something again you won’t hear CNN and the kind say it loud. What he actually apologized to the Chinese officials for in his deep gut, however, is left for everyone to feel curious about in the many years to come.
*Not the real number, which I don’t remember.
UPDATE: I find that this post published on the Spiked: Challenging China-bashing is much more scientific, detailed and convincing on the relevant issue, and you are strongly urged to check it out.
Despite, what the numbers are (I don’t keep track of those either), I think there tends to be a difference from recalls of Chinese products vs. other recalled products.
Other recalled products — for example batteries or tires or whatnot, tend to be due to defects that were previously unknown/untested (aka. explosions under extreme conditions). So it is the company’s fault due to lack of testing.
Products from China tend to be recalled due to contaminants intentionally added to make production cheaper and thus increase profit on the Chinese side. So it is recalled due to excessive greed.
Take the heparin scare, for example. It’s been found that a contaminant which normally does not occur in nature were in the samples in large numbers (large enough to be non-random). In additionally, this contaminant (curiously) has a similar enough chemical structure to the real thing that it was not detected in tests. Oh and guess what? It is cheaper to make than the real thing.
By the way, heparin is used medically to treat patients so cutting corners on that is a big no-no. It also killed 19 people. Oh and the CCP tried to shirk responsibility at the beginning by saying it’s the responsibility of the companies to check its imported products (they also said something similar at the beginning of all the other recalls). What kind of leadership is that?
Basically it says “we don’t care if our people cut corners and poison others, it’s your fault for using our products in the first place”. The CCP changed its position later to crack down on those producers, but its initial reaction is indicative of the Chinese attitude. We don’t see this kind of attitude from recalls from other nations or companies within the US.
This reflects a serious flaw in Chinese culture.
Another example (so you don’t think I’m picking on China only): the severity of the big earthquake in Taiwan (9/21/2000) was in large part due to construction companies replacing the appropriate construction materials with cheap fillers.
Want more examples? Dying meat that’s not fresh so that it will look fresh and people will buy it (and consequently make the buyers sick because not only is the food bad, there are chemicals in it).
I feel like, in Chinese culture, it is acceptable, even considered “smart” sometimes, for people to take shortcuts to increase profits. This kind of environment only promotes and increases the chances of people doing it and I consider it a big problem in our culture.
It reflects badly on the whole culture, and I would be ashamed if there were recalls of Taiwanese products in the same way. What comes out of the country should be a source of pride, not something full of defects because the businessmen were greedy.
It is why Chinese product recalls are such a big deal. It’s not the fact that there were recalls, it is WHY they had to recall them. And and it is because the Chinese reaction is to push responsibility onto someone else.
deneb7
May 1, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Thanks for your comments and you did raise some valid points.
Since I was talking about the toy recalls, let’s focus on this example first. The very first incidence was due to lead paint. The Chinese government immediately took the responsibility of enacting tougher regulations and started investigations. I didn’t recall they shirked away from that. But immediately following this, all sorts of incidents were causing public attentions. Almost all of them were not the manufacturers’ fault. At least they shouldn’t bear the major responsibilities. Take the dropping magnets for example, the company Meitai admitted quietly it was their design flaw and the chair of the company went to China to apologize. Despite that, in the west, all you could hear was name calling, emphasizing only on the phrase of “made in China”.
It must be emphasized that products manufactured in China bear a very different nature from others. They carry NO Chinese brand. Japanese products typically carry a Japanese brand. But most of the products from mainland China at this moment were merely manufactured for a western company, who designs and brands the products. By both industrial standards and common sense, The brand company takes full responsibility of quality control, because this is precisely how they maintain the reputation of their brand and why they scoop the highest profits in the entire manufacturing/selling chain. If products from a particular factory don’t meet their quality standard, abandon it and find a better one.
Most Chinese manufacturers chose not to label their products precisely because they thought it would be the most cost effective if they focused only on manufacturing and let the foreign company mind the rest of the management, including designing, marketing and quality control, since the Chinese manufacturers had very limited experience in it. For example, their knowledge of US safety standards and regulations were little.
This used to be such an obvious deal, and only became completely messed up when it became fashion of bashing Chinese products. It’s like when a company’s products are bad, instead of questioning the manager, you go directly into the factories and blame the workers. Does it make any sense to you? But it suddenly made “a lot sense” when “China” is part of the question. People who have a pre-formed taste of disliking China easily swallow the most ridiculous.
You said that in Chinese culture, it’s acceptable, or even considered “smart” to take shortcuts. I heard this thousands of times and it’s a quite typical misunderstanding. It shows the ignorance of people, including many Chinese, toward the Chinese culture. What you said had never had a place in the Chinese culture. Take a look at the ancient Chinese fine arts. None of them showed any sign of preference of taking shortcuts. Quite to the contrary, they tend to be elaborating, often beyond necessary.
But what you said was partially true as well. It does reflect some truth about the situation in China these days which deserves our attentions. It is not the “Chinese” culture though, partially it’s the culture of the primitive capitalism, and partially because Chinese had struggled so badly for survival for almost 100 years since the end of Qing Dynasty. If you look a few centuries back, when Europe or America was in their early days of capitalism, the same phenomena were common, causing all sorts of bad things. Well, people often said that one should not repeat the mistakes. But it’s very hard to tell the Chinese to avoid them as free market is still a fresh idea for many of them after two thousand years long feudal systems.
Since most Chinese companies still don’t fully understand the importance of establishing their own brand, their sense of quality control are weak. As I mentioned earlier, they tend to leave it to foreign companies and choose to stay as an “anonymous” manufacturer.
Fortunately Chinese are learning everyday. As you said, products coming out of China should be the pride of the country. HOWEVER, this would only happen when those products actually carry a Chinese brand. The sense of responsibilities will only become voluntary when one wishes to establish his name in front of the people. More and more Chinese manufactures are trying to do so, since it seems now, even if they attempt to avoid the troubles, they are still blamed for EVERYTHING anyway, making the brand company in the middle quite worthless, except for the retail networks.
So rest assure that the “culture” of China you mentioned will shift over time, at least to the optimistic people, when more Chinese companies seek to sell their own brands. The market will educate them automatically.
But, you see, here is precisely the problem. My original intention of the post was not to discuss how to improve the qualities of Chinese products but media distortion. If you sit down and examine why Chinese products are the way they are with a rational mind, you will find very deep historical/economical reasons behind. But when the massive media keep selling their overly simplified propaganda, the majority people who have no time and interests of reading my blog, who only watch TV for knowledges, would simply get away with a distorted picture that China is bad.
chiralanomaly
May 2, 2008 at 1:24 am
Hmm.. well I’m pretty sure I heard that some CCP official tried to deny the lead paint or say something like, “there’s no problem in the Chinese population” as a way to defer responsibility. I can’t find it anymore because that news is so old, but I do remember hearing something that sounded to me like they were shirking responsibility.
At any rate, I mentioned it because I think that’s the biggest reason media’s become so biased (so you don’t think I’m digressing again).
If it didn’t seem like CCP/Chinese companies were trying to act irresponsibly, it may have just been another recall. But denial of a problem, or blaming someone else, just looks bad and the media is obviously going to run with it.
You really can’t blame people for being annoyed that the Chinese counterparts won’t take responsibility for what they produce.
You can try to blame the original companies, but isn’t it true that these companies signed contracts with or hired the Chinese factories?
If it wasn’t because of greed/corruption at the managerial level in the factories (whom I assume are also Chinese), then what is it? Can you really say that Mattel officials (or any other company) in the US are responsible for the factories breaking their contract and substituting cheaper materials?
Mattel apologized because they felt responsible that they did not research the offer given to them by the Chinese factory… but ultimately, it was still the Chinese factory that was corrupt and broke the contract and took the shortcut.
I agree, US companies should be blamed because they are stupid. They don’t realize that when they are offered cheaper deals, there is probably a catch and someone is taking a shortcut somewhere.
On brand names — all of the products still have “made in China” printed on it somewhere.. does that not count for anything? People look for “made in XXX” products, despite brand name.
As for my little digression on culture… I find it interesting you’re comparing ancient culture with today’s culture. I would not point to the 1920’s in the US, or disco (70’s), as indicative of culture today. I believe your example is even further back than that.
The kind of thinking prevalent in a society is what forms its culture, not what happened hundreds of years ago. If you pay attention to the mindset of many Chinese, I think you will find that they do feel it’s “smart” to take shortcuts, either that or, they shrug and say, “it happens” (which is a form of acceptance).
Maybe it’s just that I feel this more strongly because my reaction is outrage and shock — so their indifference or support presents itself very clearly to me.
deneb7
May 2, 2008 at 1:06 pm
First of all, by your same logic, you really can’t blame us feeling outrageous because the media was acting irresponsibly. As I mentioned in my post, what they did was totally unprofessional, citing incomplete and misleading information and their only aim was bashing China. While they were acting in such a manner, taking no responsibility as professional journalists, I felt as shocked as you were toward the unprofessional Chinese manufacturers, and therefore I excused the Chinese counterparts, maybe a bit to much.
We should not just “try” to blame the original companies. They should be held responsible for the most of it. I am not saying the Chinese manufacturers are free from any blames. But responsibility is proportional to profits. While the brand company taking 90% margins and Chinese manufacturers were paid minimally, it doesn’t sound right to me that all attentions were targeted toward the Chinese manufacturers when bad things happen. Again, it’s like skipping over the manager and directly blaming the labors.
But I agree that we need to improve the qualities our products, even just for the purpose of sustaining our economic growth. Changing people’s mindset is indeed a very important part of it. The right solution, I believe, is to encourage Chinese companies to brand their own products. The sense of responsibility only becomes real when it’s tied to their reputation. But this isn’t so easy. I can go more details but I’d rather not. In any case CCP has very little to do with this.
Yes, they do label “made in China”. But hey, there are tens of thousands of independent manufacturers in China making the same thing, sharing the same label. They compete against each other very badly, and yet, once the products are out, they all stay anonymous. It’s very hard to require them to feel “proud” of something that hardly belongs to themselves. That’s just human nature.
As for culture. Ok, call it “Chinese culture” if you so wish. But to compare the ancient cultures is not meaningless. The point is, you only understand it when you put things into historical context. Today’s China, at least economic wise, has some similarities to Europe and America 2 or 3 hundred years ago. What you are seeing is not “Chinese” Chinese culture. It’s the greediness of primitive capitalism at work. Can we skip this phase? Maybe, but it’s hard. Remember that the west has practiced capitalism for centuries and we just attempted modernization some 20 years ago.
Finally, are those US companies stupid? No. Not at all. They are the real players on the ground and they know the game well. If for the same price, they could get better products else where, say in India, they would all move there quickly. They knew deep in their guts that for the same price, they get the best products from China, even though it might not be as good as the US demands, but for the money they are willing to pay, it’s hard to find anything better. That’s capitalism, bitter but real.
Can they get better things else where? Sure, at 5 times higher price. They can’t afford that because the American consumers can’t. I heard lots of American saying that we should all start buying products elsewhere other than China so we will get better things. Those are economy morons. If this would be true, why do you think all those American companies stay in China? Do they just love China? This might change as more and more underdeveloped countries are now copying China and we are getting more competitors. So we will see, I hope by that time we would have shifted our economy away from manufacturing centered already.
chiralanomaly
May 2, 2008 at 6:25 pm
http://www.tvo.org/theagenda/video/TAWSP_Full_20080428_0_320×240_208k.swf
powertalks
May 2, 2008 at 9:24 pm
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zIaVB-k7QlY&feature=related
powertalks
May 2, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Sorry, I’ve been a bit busy and don’t have the time to write a thoughtful response to your comment.
Perhaps I was a bit too negative in my last reply. The last sentence was actually in respect to people I’ve talked to or observed — not to whatever media reported. At any rate, I agree with your comparison to other countries’ industrial history, and you make a very good point, but I still think it’s a bit of a stretch to compare today’s culture with culture decades or centuries ago and claim that as Chinese culture.
I would call that Chinese history and artifacts. Obviously it’s still reflective of the ethnicity, but not of the mindset in the 21st century.
In general though, I think the media is a tool to affect change — if the media hadn’t reported on the recalls and on the Chinese reaction, perhaps the CCP would have simply denied it and not tried to improve anything.
A good example is the latest disasters — media coverage of the disaster in burma/myanmar was starting to pressure the government to improve and accept aid. Unfortunately, the earthquake has taken precedence and I’m afraid less progress was made in myanmar during that time because it dropped out of the news.
Please note I’m not trying to belittle the earthquake — I’m just saying there are more deaths in myanmar in a smaller area, under a more oppressive government, so logically, it should be more pressing. Fortunately they’ve started accepting aid from Asian countries, but it’s been weeks so the critical period has passed.
Since there has been little news on Myanmar, we have only vague ideas of the current death toll due to diseases and lack of food, clothing, and shelter there. Not knowing what’s going on makes it difficult to send help or to convince the government to accept help.
Basically, the question is: Would you prefer progress forced by the media’s (possibly biased) coverage, or cover-ups and non-action because of a complacent, non-critical media?
deneb7
May 21, 2008 at 8:07 pm