Comment by rm_-rf_slash | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rm_-rf_slash | Hacker News Reader

First off, China has been getting more and more expensive over the years as their labor costs rose and other developing countries started playing the same game. Even Chinese companies outsource to Vietnam, Bangladesh, etc.

Second, China's bigger problem is that they lack sex, and that's not just a dig at the one child policy. Sure, they have some lovely trains and airports, but nobody says "I buy Vietnamese so someday I can buy Chinese." They say "I buy Chinese so someday I can buy German."

China is simply not an aspirational brand. They have plenty of businesses that mirror the West (Weibo for Twitter, Renren for Facebook, etc) which are highly popular among Chinese (because the government often gives them no other choice), but are little more than an eye-roll outside the Middle Kingdom.

Classic middle income trap scenario: too rich to compete by making things cheap, too lame to compete on the high end. I would be interested in hearing a rebuttal, but so far I have been unable to find one, on HN or otherwise.

Edit: Downvoting without giving an explanation doesn't count as a rebuttal. In fact I'm not entirely sure what effect it is supposed to have, aside from making you feel less insecure about your own opinions ;)

You could make many of the same arguments about Japan post-WWII. As I understand it, Japan stopped exporting as many low quality, low-margin products during the 80s (largely due to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry), and was able to very quickly gain a good reputation and brand. I've heard they had a similar reputation to China before this.

China has been well-aware of this impending trend, I'm sure they can make similar shifts. I think it's happening to some degree - I'm already impressed with some Chinese companies, like Xiaomi.

Xiaomi is a good example and I intentionally left it out so someone smart could mention it ;). The engineering is quality, and I can see it becoming popular outside of China.

Regarding manufacturing quality and the similar trajectory, you are correct. But in the 80s and onward it wasn't just electronics we were getting from Japan. Anime, jpop, ramen, sushi, all of these cultural products - which couldn't quite be emblematic of anywhere else - made Japan a soft power juggernaut.

Can China do the same? I'm not sure. Part of being cool is the ability to say "fuck the man," whoever that is and in whatever way, but dissent is too tightly managed for such an entity to be both globally enjoyed and accepted by the state, lest others start asking questions about the way things are run.

Plus, people also seem to forget that Japan started its industrialisation as soon as during the 19th century. It was a super power nation-state in Asia before the war, with numerous cultural ties with Europe and USA on a peer to peer level. China is a different story.

Ramen started getting big in the late? '70s in "flyover country", sushi became big in the early '80s, anime in the '90s. There was definitely an inflection point sometime in the '80s, "The Japan That Can Say No: Why Japan Will Be First Among Equals" was published in 1989 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Japan_That_Can_Say_No) ... hubris was followed by nemesis, the asset bubble got popped in 1991, and the aftermath was bungled.

Japan has always been fascinating to the West, from the moment Perry told them to open the hell up. Japan has such an interesting wacky culture, architecture, art, lifestyle. They've always had craftsmen the like of whom can compete with the Germanic countries; something which few countries can say. When it came time to industrialize, Japan was able to build very advanced stuff on their own- the Zero, for example. And they make fantastic movies!

The Japanese language is also not super hard for the West to pronounce, and it is even possible to learn it. The writing system(s) are a bit confusing, but we can pronounce it. Contrast that with Chinese, and especially Chinese music. Yeah, no. The operative question: Is there any reason to learn Chinese apart from making money?

Taiwan, on the other hand, is an interesting place. Really good food, and it's going to experience a major boom as a travel food destination in the near future.

Spot on. Especially about Taiwan. It's not that "China" is culturally lacking, it's Mao's China, where the exact people capable of stimulating culture from the ground up - intellectuals - were killed off if not dead from starvation.

But Japanese being easier to learn than Chinese? I'm in shock: I've always found Chinese to be simple and Japanese to be mind-bogglingly impenetrable, even if I like it more.

It is mind boggling that the Mao-created famine that killed 40 million was only ~50 years ago.

I suppose if you're young enough. I was born in the middle of the Great Leap Forward, but very fortunately in the US, came of political age during the middle of the Cultural Revolution (which we're now learning, which should be to no one's surprise, slaughtered and maimed millions) ... and all this was brought into sharp relief when Nixon sundered the PRC from its alliance with the USSR and went to China in 1972. Only someone with his impeccable anti-Communist credentials could have pulled off that essential victory in the Cold War (with, of course, the aid of the USSR, which offered us co-dominion, to take out the PRC's nukes and rule the world together, at least for a while; we declined and took that offer to Mao and company, who by then were not surprised). So the politically aware of my generation and older know this sort of thing, and know the leadership of the PRC is today only somewhat less murderous.

"Made in Taiwan" is now also a marker for higher quality than "Made in China", you'll sometimes see a line of equipment where the best is made on the island.

Ah, and for culture, those wonderful crazy animators in Taiwan have made a very widespread impact, at least in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Media_Animation

If my personal experience makes any difference, when I was shopping in IKEA with my mother there were two seemingly identical ceramic bowls, one made in Turkey and the other made in China. My mom chose the one made in Turkey because she doesn't want to eat out of something made in China (she knows nothing about manufacturing in Turkey btw).

Also, I would personally never consciously buy any technology designed and built by a Chinese company because even with all of the NSA scandals in the US I still trust my information more on an Android or IOS device than a Chinese Android variant.

They built some thoroughly respected world class stuff in the '70s. My family legally pirated 8-track tapes in the early to middle part of that period (no $$$ to the RIAA, $$$ reserved for ASCAP but they refused the payments), and all the duplication equipment was built on TEAC reel-to-reel tape drives (with the 2 track head and electronics behind it replaced by an 8 track head). Sony made a fabulous direct drive, cast aluminum record player that I got a copy of in the mid '70s that was still working fine and worth an assessed $900 when a tornado trashed it in 2011.

Other stuff of course took longer, e.g. their '70s cars weren't too hot, I got a ride in a grad student's Toyoda Corolla in the summer of 1977, but they soon started selling well, "Datsun, we are driven", my sister bought a used one in the early '80s and it was much better although still had a ways to go (and it's hard to imagine how much brand equity Nissan threw away when they re-badged in the early-mid '80s, their out of pocket costs were well over a billion in 2015 dollars).

I guess I'm saying that to those of us paying attention in the '70s, we were willing to believe Japan would get there in things like cars, and of course it didn't hurt how well they engineered and built things like the Mitsubishi Zero WWII fighter, WWII still had a big effect on people's minds in the '70s.

Hmmm, Sony was not, at least initially, one of the anointed MITI companies, Morita (and it says something that I don't have to mention his given name) had to convince the powers that be, MITI very possibly, to get the authority for $10,000 ($90K in 2015 dollars) of foreign exchange for the rights from Bell Labs to make transistors, came out with the first model in 1955: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-55

Then sometime in the '80s? they moved a lot of production for the US market to Mexico and my family started suffering from cold solder joints. We're rather careful about buying Sony equipment nowadays and don't buy much.

Japan's reputation changed way before the 80's. For example, there's a speech by LKY from 1965 stating the "Made in Japan" no longer means cheap stuff, that it implies a top-tier product in certain industries.

Counter argument rather than rebutal. What you describe does not take into account the possibility to have internal market pick up. "Sexy" can be counterbalanced by willingness to buy the local brand, because more atuned to local tastes and for patriotic reasons. It certainly happened in USA and Europe.

Also, a sexy brand or product could arise at any time. You just need the right company with the right leader who can read the people correctly and give them something culturally appealing with taste and design. The next Jobs is probably around the corner, and he might be Chinese.

See my other response for a more verbose questioning of whether the communist party is ready to handle someone who wants to "Think Different."

This is a good point. As I stated, Chinese do enjoy Chinese products. And it certainly could have a halo effect with global consumers.

However, the question becomes which kind of product. I'm reminded of a popular "China's Got Talent"-style of show that included audience participation and voting, which the government shut down because it made them uncomfortable with the idea of regular people getting used to democracy. That's the kind of thing that chills cultural development, especially when an entrepreneur has to consider the possibility that huge sums of time and money spent on their passion could be flushed down the toilet because the communist party disapproves.

This would not be as much an issue for engineering products, and few I think dispute China's capability to innovate. I just don't believe global consumers will choose China over USA, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and so on.

> I just don't believe global consumers will choose China over USA, Europe, Japan, South Korea

That seems pretty short-sighted. Maybe you're quite young, but 15 years ago korean cars had a shocking reputation, and japanese 20 years before that. 10 years ago I wouldn't have even considered a crappy cheap korean television, now LG and samsung are tier-1 brands. And subjectively the label "made in china" doesn't have the negative ring it seemed to just a few years ago.

Consumer sentiment can change pretty fast.

Ah, good point. I'm in my early 20s so I have only Glengarry Glen Ross to remind me how lowly Korean brands were seen just a few decades ago. Sure, China can/does compete globally in high-tech, and certainly there's no reason to think they can't make products just as appealing as the countries I listed.

That being said I'm not sure they'll be able to muster the same cultural - ahem - revolution. For example, South Korea makes LG TVs to watch their country's popular soap operas on.

When I studied Chinese I streamed mainland TV to get accustomed to the tones, and after a while I felt a reminder of "1984" about the dull propaganda books and movies that were remade by the party every year with different names. Basically, it sucked.

Factory orders are a very "mechanical" economic indicator. The "sex appeal" of a countries manufactoring sector seems quite unrelated to me. Perhaps that is why you are getting some down-os?

Not sex appeal of manufacturing, but culture. I have discussed this in length in the subsequent replies.

I think you are overestimating the strength of "country of origin" biases and underestimating how quickly those biases can shift or be "worked around" (e.g. Lenovo and Volvo Cars are companies with strong brands despite being Chinese owned). Also, it would seem to me that positive "country of origin" bias is an effect rather than a cause of economic development (and the same could be said of culture).

I live in Ithaca, NY, which has the highest rate of Volvo ownership per person in any city outside of Sweden. I had an XC70 for years, loved it. My mom bought an S80 a year after they moved production to China and we had to do expensive electrical work because of shoddy construction every season.

As long as Volvo is manufactured in China, I'll never buy one again. I'm not the only one: Volvos are falling out of favor for Subaru, and largely for the same reasons. So as far as I'm concerned, China cheapens brands.

Your comment has confirmation bias written all over it. How can you be so sure that the car wouldn't have had problems if it had been manufactured in Europe? Volvo car sales have been going up globally since the acquisition though you might be right about Ithaca, NY.

Nationality/"made in" bias does have some effect on purchasing behaviours but I doubt the seemingly strong effect it has on you is representative.

It's not confirmation bias, it's literally engineering. My XC70 and every Volvo our family had before it (3, mind you) were all built outside of China and each worked excellently for over a decade. In fact you can still see old Volvos proudly plodding around Ithaca, though not so much the new ones. A couple of years after buying the (Chinese-built) S80 it was clearly suffering from repeat electrical defects that were expensive and regularly required. I'm not sure how that fact can be any less biased.

There are many markets where branding isn't a big deal,like b2b, And China is becoming a better competitor there. For example, they lead the world in modular high-rise construction which could be worth a lot one day. They are also very good at building infrastructure.

As for consumer products, xiaomi plans to be in hundreds of product categories, maybe they'll succeed.

Funny you say that since in Bangladesh where I spent time, China is a great brand, sure not the best. It went something like: Local, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Chinese, Turkish there... in a market where Japanese and German are not really in the running.

"Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I generally agree, but China is getting better. Huawei comes to mind as a real threat to an established, trusted brand (Cisco).

> .. they lack sex ...

Sex appeal is directly tied to worldly (in the jungle sense) success. Give it time.

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