本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛Holiday shows China bustling with fakes
Dec 05, 2007 04:30 AM
Ellen Roseman
Last weekend, Toronto police shut down several allegedly criminal operations and seized an estimated $10 million worth of luxury goods police believed to be counterfeit.
The story struck a nerve with me. I've just returned from a 10-day tour of China, where many of these copies originate.
At each tourist site we visited – Tiananmen Square in Beijing and the nearby Great Wall, or the Museum of the Terra Cotta Warriors in Xian – we made our way through throngs of people hawking what were said to be Rolex watches, Gucci bags and Montblanc pens.
These high-end products looked real, but were sold at prices that started at about $20 (Canadian) and fell to half or less if you negotiated. At the Shanghai Bund (the waterfront area where foreign powers had their trading houses), our group was hounded by sellers of faux Rolex watches at six for $10. We made a quick exit to the bus.
The tour guides work for the Chinese government and take you to government-owned stores that show how to detect the counterfeits. The guides warn you to be careful of goods sold in "the free market."
While reluctant to criticize the status quo, the guides often let things slip out in conversation.
Our guide in Xian, the mother of a university student, told us China has enough spaces for only 10 per cent of the country's young people, and the tuition is about the same as my sons paid at the University of Toronto.
Hospital care is very expensive, she said. Many Chinese, if diagnosed with cancer, go home to die.
Canadians may be shocked to hear this Communist country lacks the universal health care we enjoy. Only 12 per cent of people in rural China have private health insurance, and only 54 per cent in urban China.
But then, China has a huge population of 1.3 billion, but a slim tax base.
In a new book, British author Will Hutton talks about China's economy as an impossible halfway house.
The Communist party has maintained extensive control, despite a broad liberalization of prices, a rollback of planning, a boom in foreign direct investment and the granting of substantial autonomy to all forms of enterprise.
"China is half-pregnant; and that is the way the party intends to keep it," Hutton says in The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century (Little, Brown, $26).
Now the world's fourth-largest economy, China is a counterfeiter's paradise, he continues.
"Between 15 and 20 per cent of all well-known brands in China are fake. Counterfeiting is estimated to represent 8 per cent of the gross domestic product, elegant testimony to Chinese business strategies and the ineffectiveness of the Chinese legal system."
China needs to take the pressure off investment and exports as drivers of economic development, he argues. Private consumption should start doing more of the work of propelling growth.
But can the Chinese be persuaded to save less and consume more?
"The habit of saving is very deeply embedded, largely because China's health, pensions and social security systems are so shockingly weak," Hutton says.
With Beijing hosting the Summer Olympics in just seven months, there's much talk about cleaning up the air pollution. But what about cleaning up the plague of pirated products?
As a tourist who had to fend off free-enterprise vendors every step of the way, I'm not confident this monumental task will be completed on time.
But given China's miraculous transformation so far, you never say never.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net
Dec 05, 2007 04:30 AM
Ellen Roseman
Last weekend, Toronto police shut down several allegedly criminal operations and seized an estimated $10 million worth of luxury goods police believed to be counterfeit.
The story struck a nerve with me. I've just returned from a 10-day tour of China, where many of these copies originate.
At each tourist site we visited – Tiananmen Square in Beijing and the nearby Great Wall, or the Museum of the Terra Cotta Warriors in Xian – we made our way through throngs of people hawking what were said to be Rolex watches, Gucci bags and Montblanc pens.
These high-end products looked real, but were sold at prices that started at about $20 (Canadian) and fell to half or less if you negotiated. At the Shanghai Bund (the waterfront area where foreign powers had their trading houses), our group was hounded by sellers of faux Rolex watches at six for $10. We made a quick exit to the bus.
The tour guides work for the Chinese government and take you to government-owned stores that show how to detect the counterfeits. The guides warn you to be careful of goods sold in "the free market."
While reluctant to criticize the status quo, the guides often let things slip out in conversation.
Our guide in Xian, the mother of a university student, told us China has enough spaces for only 10 per cent of the country's young people, and the tuition is about the same as my sons paid at the University of Toronto.
Hospital care is very expensive, she said. Many Chinese, if diagnosed with cancer, go home to die.
Canadians may be shocked to hear this Communist country lacks the universal health care we enjoy. Only 12 per cent of people in rural China have private health insurance, and only 54 per cent in urban China.
But then, China has a huge population of 1.3 billion, but a slim tax base.
In a new book, British author Will Hutton talks about China's economy as an impossible halfway house.
The Communist party has maintained extensive control, despite a broad liberalization of prices, a rollback of planning, a boom in foreign direct investment and the granting of substantial autonomy to all forms of enterprise.
"China is half-pregnant; and that is the way the party intends to keep it," Hutton says in The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century (Little, Brown, $26).
Now the world's fourth-largest economy, China is a counterfeiter's paradise, he continues.
"Between 15 and 20 per cent of all well-known brands in China are fake. Counterfeiting is estimated to represent 8 per cent of the gross domestic product, elegant testimony to Chinese business strategies and the ineffectiveness of the Chinese legal system."
China needs to take the pressure off investment and exports as drivers of economic development, he argues. Private consumption should start doing more of the work of propelling growth.
But can the Chinese be persuaded to save less and consume more?
"The habit of saving is very deeply embedded, largely because China's health, pensions and social security systems are so shockingly weak," Hutton says.
With Beijing hosting the Summer Olympics in just seven months, there's much talk about cleaning up the air pollution. But what about cleaning up the plague of pirated products?
As a tourist who had to fend off free-enterprise vendors every step of the way, I'm not confident this monumental task will be completed on time.
But given China's miraculous transformation so far, you never say never.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net