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Posts Tagged ‘Foxconn’

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This Post is a Fake: China’s penchant for copying has real economic benefits

In China on 22 June 2012 at 5:08 PM

I should have asked my Mother. She retired to Delaware many years ago. She didn’t want to leave the Northeast but she also wanted to reduce her tax bill. Plenty of seniors populate the state that has no personal income tax.

Lin Chunping in January this year announced his acquisition of a Delaware-based bank. He said the US$60 million purchase for Atlantic Bank demonstrated his business prowess. In a story reported today by Associated Press, Lin’s story has unravelled:

“The only thing that may have been legendary is Lin’s audacity. Not only did he not buy Atlantic Bank in Delaware for $60 million as he claimed, but there is no Atlantic Bank in that state.” (Source: AP)

Celle-ci n’est pas une banque

And I was worried people would notice my Bulgari belt buckle wasn’t the real deal.

Seems it isn’t just handbags, watches and the occasional belt buckle that’s copied in China. Many diplomas require careful scrutiny:

“Zinch China, the Chinese arm of U.S.-based educational networking site Zinch.com, estimates that 90 percent of recommendation letters to U.S. schools are fake, that 70 percent of the essays are written by someone else and that half the transcripts are fabricated.” (Source: AP)

SGEntrepreneurs.com questioned why copying is so rampant in China. “US has Google, EBay and 2nd Life and China has Baidu, AliBaba and HiPiHi. In each of the example, for every US company which makes it work, China will have a carbon copy,” said the article. In this he posits that teaching is focused on copying design versus original design. Western style teaching is based on the Socratic method of questioning and argument. Eastern style teaching is focused on memorisation by rote repetition.

Soon most fakes will be manufactured outside China due to rising labour costs

What is the upside of fakery?

The ability to copy flawlessly is helping China grow. Their creativity is showcased in process engineering. Manufacturers can take an item and reduce the cost of production dramatically. This has led to the hyper-growth of firms like Foxconn. They regularly teach world-leading brands like Apple how to reduce the cost of manufacturing an item. It’s why we pay less for phones today, in real dollars, than ever before.

The fake claims of buying banks or dishonest reference letters for school are all attempts to gain notoriety or achieve in an ultra-competitive society. China is on the move and losers are left behind.

Thankfully the fakes are getting exposed so the real stars can rise to the top.


Outfoxed by Foxconn: First Trumps NPR then Buys Japan’s Sharp

In America, China, Hong Kong on 29 March 2012 at 1:39 PM

In American public radio there’s a lot of soul-searching going on. And pushed from the centre of the debate is Taiwan’s Foxconn – the powerhouse technology manufacturer with sprawling plants in Mainland China.

Earlier this year National Public Radio (NPR) ran a segment entitled “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.” This one hour show focused on the stage theatre performance of Mike Daisey. He was invited onto “This American Life” and introduced by the show’s host Ira Glass. Then Daisey told his story.

The focus on the show is a visit to the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen China.  This facility is notorious for a spate of worker suicides. The copycat nature of these forced management to erect giant safety nets under the lip of each rooftop. It is also the plant where Apple products are manufactured.

In short, however, Mike Daisey included a number of fabrications in his monologue. And while that is inappropriate, what got lost in the messy follow-on are the deplorable work conditions faced by the employees of Foxconn.

In a “first ever” the host of ‘This American Life’ dedicated an hour long show to a retraction. This included investigations and a report by a reporter from The New York Times. Since then the apology, the factual inconsistencies, the drama of the errant monologue has been the centre of attention in the US press.

Foxconn has been absent. By allowing lies to get in the way of a good story, the story disappeared.

Today it’s reported that Foxconn became the largest shareholder in Japanese technology leader Sharp Electronics. This once-dominant manufacturer of flat-screen televisions has faced tough times as it sought to maintain a vertically integrated business. (Vertically integrated means they start with research through to manufacturing all the way to distribution of products. Some companies only perform one of these roles.)

The rise of Foxconn to major shareholder of a Japanese electronics giant is a sharp signal of the growth of Chinese companies (sharp signal – get it?).

And while the media in America are diverted with “how” the story got told about Foxconn, no one is focused ont he story.

Looks like Foxconn outfoxed the Americans, no?

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