The world is too interconnected (environment, trade, finance, technology, etc) for us (China and the US) to be playing one upmanship.
It's not "one-upsmanship", it's consumerism. Feedback.
The Chinese business model seems to be, "we'll sell you garbage cheap, and when it breaks, we'll sell you more cheap garbage."
It works for people living at the bottom of the barrel, the kind of people who never get ahead because they keep buying cheap stuff that breaks.
There's a sucker born every minute, but not everybody is a born sucker. Fool me once, and all that.
My guess is that as US consumption falls, in general, and consumers are faced with buying cheap stuff that's going to break, or less cheap stuff that will last, sure, the poorest of the poor are going to stick with the cheapest of the cheap, but that's not the only business model that will succeed going forward, at least, not among the rest of the country, which is, as you know, heavily middle class.
But, of course, the rest of the third world, which is populated with a larger percentage of the poorest of the poor, will keep demanding the cheapest of the cheap.
And China is very good at producing the cheapest of the cheap. Toys with lead paint. Children's pajamas that catch on fire. Cat food bulked up with plastic waste. Mop buckets that crack after a month or two of ordinary use. Counterfeit pharmaceuticals.
Not my cup of tea. |
