What Chinese corner-cutting reveals about modernity | Hacker News Reader

What Chinese corner-cutting reveals about modernity

aeon.co

63 pointsbilifuduo11 comments

Corner cutting as a behavior can only persist because of high competition and information asymmetry: if buyers can't tell quality from crap, then honest sellers get out-competed and driven out of the market.

China is a very, very competitive market with relatively low barriers to entry. Any successful product instantly attracts legions of competitors and copycats.

Technological changes can make the information asymmetry much worse. If buyers have had a long time to familiarize themselves with a product, they're more likely to tell good from bad, in the process weeding out bad producers. If it's a new product, they never got that chance. I'll bet a lot of these apartment buildings are sold to first-time owners.

Classic paper, in the context of used cars:

https://www.iei.liu.se/nek/730g83/artiklar/1.328833/AkerlofM...

you can replace Chinese related names and places with Indian names and places and it would read just the same. I've seen it through out my life and now I can see it even more clearly after being exposed to living in the US.

"Chalta Hai" would be the Indian "Cha buduo". And it has caused as many, if not more, casualties in property & life.

It is all about rich or poor.

If the author do some research on the relative rich people in China, the result should be different.

It probably goes without saying that such egregious corner-cutting shouldn't be happening regardless of being rich or poor.

I would disagree that it is about being rich or poor. If you take a look at the state of public infrastructure (roads, water, electricity, transport) in India, the amount of funds being spent do not match the quality. The only place where perhaps you can see the 'chalta hai' attitude not evident is where there are strong and enforced regulations. All of the rest is a little bit of shit all the time because of the chalta hai attitude and corruption.

check the home of rich people and poor.

Ok, I don't think you get the point. The home of rich people will have a backup electric supply, water tank and other such conveniences to offset what should have been a basic good infrastructure provided by the government to begin with. The attitude of acceptance of crappy infrastructure is the chalta hai attitude that the article speaks about.

It's the same acceptance of crappy roads, crappy Internet, crappy service, crappy foo... that is consumed without expecting better. The rich also just accept it because they can afford to spend on backup options like a different phone line, multiple service providers etc. However the acceptance of good enough is independent of wealth in India.

do not know why get down vote.

since when you get down vote because of different opinion in hn？

Same in Brazil. It's called "jeitinho".

That's going to get fixed.[1] Li Keqiang doesn't like China's quality problems.

Japan had that problem around 1970. It got fixed.

[1] https://www.marketplace.org/2015/12/10/world/why-cant-china-...

From the article:

'“We click the pens that’ll be sold in China only once, because Chinese consumers are more price-conscious,” explains Huang. “The pens that’ll be exported to Japan? We click them twice. They’ll pay twenty cents more for a better pen.”'

As Chinese consumers get richer, their tastes will get more discriminating, and you should expect quality to improve.

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