No I'm not dead

I've been meaning to write for a while, just unable to build up the motivation to do so. I've also had something to write about for a while. It seems like a good idea to me, but will ultimately turn out to be a flop. Notice the conviction there. Ah.. literary genius in the making.

Chinese Product Quality

Firstly we need to define quality. It is not in the sense it has been used in the past i.e. with acronyms such as HQ, AQ etc. I didn't actually even know what those meant, nor the ranking system behind it. I think its only the guys who know. But I think I'll just leave it at that. Quality is (partly from dictionary.com's definition) as:

Superiority of kind: an intellect of unquestioned quality
OR
Degree or grade of excellence: yard goods of low quality

To me they mean the same thing. So to me that'll be enough.

In modern times, China has been associtated with low levels of quality. I shall now attempt to explain this phenomenon.

One of the problems with the Chinese culture is its selfishness. While it is officially a communist country, in reality its more of a dictatorship. The politburo controls everything, and the Communist party a.k.a. "The Party" supresses anyone who opposes them. It is only in recent times, with the advent of the Internet, that many of the Chinese have been able to speak out against the government. The Party epitomises the selfishness of the country. Many, dare I say, all of the members are in it to gain something personally. I don't mean to say that everyone is like that, and China is not the only country who has this kind of problem. We're all selfish to one degree or another.

The other issue which contributes to the problem is the short-sighted nature of a lot of Chinese people. This is probably true in a visual sense as well, but thats not really the point. Chinese will do whats best in the short term e.g. buy whats cheap even if its useless, sell dodgy products because possible punishment would be a relatively long time away. In fact, I'm in a room where the priority is actually going home right now instead of doing their assignment thats due on Friday. Gladly, I doubt anyone of them read this blog on a regular basis.

I don't actually wish to support this claim by any evidence, because this isn't really meant to be a substantial argument, plus I can't be bothered. Its just an inference I've made from my err... rather small period of life experiences.

Chinese, and quite possibly Asian people in general, are damn cheapasses. Yes, so I'm Asian too, and I'm a damn cheapass. From our sample size of one, we can generalise this to the rest of the population.

If you combine the above three propositions, you reach a conclusion where if the Chinese produce a product, we'll make it cheap, sell it even if its dodgy, and then it becomes your problem. If its your problem, we don't care about it anymore, and we won't spend any more resources on fixing your problem because... well... its yours. Following from this, if we're not prepared to fix your problem, we don't feel the need to reduce the problems that you have, that is, inproving the quality. Adding in the short term outlook, we couldn't care less if you are coming back to buy any more stuff later down the line.

In sum:
Selfishness + Short term outlook + Being a damn cheapass = Doing stuff at lowest cost == Low quality goods.