“Next year we are going to bring some production to the U.S. on the Mac. We’ve been working on this for a long time,
and we were getting closer to it and we’re really proud of it. We wanted to do something more substantial, so we’ll
literally invest over $100 million, we’ll be working with people, and we’ll be investing our money.”
These are the recent words of Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, and on our new Apple machines is already written “Assembled in Usa” together with the usual “Designed in Cupertino”.
Translation: “Our products will be no longer Made in China, we want to work with people who care about what they do, we want to keep the investments in a democratic country.”
Yes, Not Made in China is becoming a brand, a real one and will be more and more in the future if the country won’t be able to reverse the trend.
Salaries are growing, the Chinese economy is flying but it’s also based on internal growth and on a currency that nobody wants because untrustable. And what is worse quality and good products are something very far from Chinese suppliers’ mentality.
The risk of a scandal for bad working conditions or for workers committing suicide due to excessive working hours in a place where everyday there’s a food gate or a pollution issue is too much even for companies like Apple that are able to control their production at the highest standard.
So today the biggest brands are starting again making things by themselves to make them better.
Living in Shenzhen I talk with a lot of people working for the major electronic brands in the world and what they say
is always the same: producing in China it’s not convenient anymore, we bring everything back. Chinese suppliers copy, don’t care about what they do, they give you a sample and then they fraudulently put half of the material in the production pieces.
I believe the difference between making something and making it decent is very little, but it looks that Chinese suppliers don’t get this concept. The best example is probably the fake iPhone 6 running Android that can be found
for 100 dollars in Huachiang North Market. There’s so much effort in reverse engineering an iPhone more than building your own product… and you can sell your own product for a higher price (like Samsung does).
The reason of this attitude must be researched in years and years of Communism now translated in a despotic form of Capitalism, where money today and right now is everything. Nobody here will accept a payment of trillions tomorrow if they can have a dollar today, and nobody on the other side will give you an advanced payment because everybody will run away with that sum without developing the work.
So everything is untrustable and fake, the same being comfortable in copying La Gioconda or the Tour Eiffel can be found in products. There’s no restrain in stealing other companies’ projects, or selling objects that don’t work. A scam is something to be proud of and morality is not part of the values of a businessman or a salesman in China.
I just found a funny charging cable for Apple products: the cable doesn’t work because OS recognizes if the accessory is original or not, but the market is full of these useless cables and there’s plenty of people that buy them, they are very cheap so everyone gets swindled but they don’t go back to the shop to complain because it’s not worth the money.
And here you are! In a market of potentially 1.7 billions you will always find somebody to dupe and if you are proud of your scams the best is making a lot and selling cheap products more than going for the big shot.
My country is the reign of scams, but if you buy a fake computer in Naples, you usually open the package and find a polite, funny and creative letter on the brick you bring home, not if it’s Made in China.