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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Many Chinese manufacturers are behaving as though they have no future |
| 2019-11-25 |
| h/t Instapundit [BoingBoing] The China Law Blog (previously) reports on the kinds of questions that western businesses operating in China are raising; China's serious economic downturn and rising authoritarianism have turned the site's normally businesslike posts into a glimpse of a kind of cyberpunk stranger-than-fiction dystopia (for example). A new post on the site describes the consequences of a sharp downturn in the Chinese economy: a new mood among many Chinese businesspeople that they are at the end of the long Chinese boom and that there's no reason not to burn their bridges with non-Chinese firms, because they're not going to be doing business with them for much longer no matter what. The site's author, Dan Harris, compares the mood in China today with the situation in Russia in the 1990s, when outside businesses would get repeatedly ripped off by their Russian partners, and would go away mystified that these partners would take the short term payouts of burning a foreign partner, at the expense of the much larger upside they could realize from an ongoing arrangement. For these Russian entrepreneur/bandits, Harris says, "They do not believe they will be able to operate freely five years or even one year from now. So though you see them as having irrationally sacrificed massive long term gains for much smaller short term rewards, they see themselves as having quite rationally grabbed what they could while it was still there." |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #4 I thought the future is in Space Jam II merchandising. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2019-11-25 14:59 |
| #3 The inhumanity and suffering that chinese businessmen subject their own employees to necessitated that there come a reckoning. |
| Posted by: Dron66046 2019-11-25 12:03 |
| #2 No question the Chinese have a different view of business than Westerners. Many stories over the years about taxi drivers stopping mid-ride at night demanding more money, manufacturers wanting to re-negotiate a better price the day before a production run is due, and so on. We look for happy customers and win-win. Saw an article the other day about how from a Chinese perspective, a happy customer meant you left money on the table. So yeah, nothing new there. What *is* new is that the Chinese economy is crashing and *that* changes the calculations. Without any possibility of long-term profit, all the chiseling and cheating that would normally take place over time in the future gets pushed into Now. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2019-11-25 11:15 |
| #1 WTF. This isn't new. Chinese businessmen have long ripped off foreign customers. Give him a choice between a quick ten grand right now by screwing you, or do the right thing and make millions over a five year contract, he'll take the ten grand every time. Not even a question. |
| Posted by: Herb McCoy 2019-11-25 06:31 |