Poorly Made in China

The subtitle of Paul Midler’s book is “An Insider’s Account of the Tactics Behind China’s Production Game.” Midler is an American who helps American and European companies get stuff made in China. The book is about how, in a dozen ways, Chinese manufacturers manage to make manufacturing deals more profitable to them at the expense of their customer — and, often, the ultimate consumer. Most of the book is about what happens to an unnamed American company that imports “telephone numbers” of beauty products. One problem is “quality fade.” The product slowly gets worse until the importer objects. For example, at one point the fragrance put in liquid soap was changed. Instead of different fragrances for products with different labels, almond was used in every case. So a product labeled Aloe Vera smelled of almond. (I discovered I couldn’t trust flaxseed oil made in China.)

A friend of mine became a vegetarian after working at Burger King. Midler had a similar conversion:

I found myself losing faith in all sorts of products manufactured in China. I was soon careful to purchase health and beauty products that were not made by local [i.e., Chinese] companies, but by large, multinational corporations — but then I realized the body wash I had been using, while it was made by a reputable global company, was actually manufactured in a plant located in South China. . . . I knew these production managers well. . . . They believed that what a customer didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.

I found myself using less body wash, eventually relying on only hot water for my showers. When no one seemed to notice the difference, I stopped using the wash altogether. And then I stopped using soap, as well. . . . Why take any chances?

The attitude of cheat your customer as much as possible isn’t a great long-term strategy, as Chinese manufacturers are learning — the situation used to be even worse. A friend of mine analyzes the situation like this: For a long time Chinese were taught Confucianism. When the Communists took over, that changed to The state is God. Now that system of morality is gone, but nothing’s replaced it. In Systems of Survival, Jane Jacobs wrote about two systems of morality, a “guardian syndrome” and a “commercial syndrome.” The commercial syndrome, appropriate for trading, placed great weight on honesty. (The guardian syndrome, in contrast, placed great weight on loyalty.) Behind Jacobs’s classification was the implication that these syndromes had evolved because they worked better than other possibilities.

Poorly Made in China was easy to read. It has those two essential elements: it’s a series of stories, long and short; and the author feels strongly about his topic.