Black prisons can always be closed once you discover them but shutting down or out the cabal that created them is much, much more difficult. That is where the focus needs to be.

Most Chinese flash manufacturers, who actually have the ability to create a pretty good product at an amazing price, do not understand this. They will frequently sell direct to the public at only a 2-3% profit margin on top of the actual manufacturing costs.

Obviously, no retailer can compete with this. Some will order the flashes and build in a small margin for themselves in hopes that people will buy from a more convenient source. But there is nowhere near the margin to stand behind the products, let alone test them thoroughly.

And since the whole system is built on as little margin as possible, quality control at the manufacturer is not what it could or should be, thus compounding the problem.

Four decades ago, Richard Nixon grasped sooner than most the huge potential of China. “Well,” he mused, “you can just stop and think of what could happen if anybody with a decent system of government got control of that mainland. Good God … There’d be no power in the world that could even—I mean, you put 800 million Chinese to work under a decent system … and they will be the leaders of the world.” That prophecy is being fulfilled in our time. The fact that until now China’s rise has been a boon to the United States rather than a bane owes much to the work of Henry Kissinger. With this book he has given his successors an indispensable guide to continuing the Sino-American “coevolution” he began.

Quote by Kendrick on 2010-03-29, 17:30:

When you look at those numbers, you need to think about the "average" yearly income of the Chinese, which works out to around USD$2,000 after conversion. I put quotes around the word because the average has dirt-poor farmers at one end, and absurdly wealthy real estate tycoons at the other. That means that in real terms, $160 a month isn't the actual average.

Quote by NFG:

And as always, this brings me back to my meta question: Can China achieve any of their empire before imploding, fracturing or polluting themselves to death?  If there's one thing that this thread has made abundantly clear, it's that China is a big place with a lot of problems, deeply rooted issues that seem to make it nigh impossible to achieve a great, stable empire state.  And certainly, will prevent it from staying there for long.

Quote by ChinaLawBlog:

At current rates of construction, China can build a city the size of Rome in only two weeks, and as much housing each year as there is in all of Spain.

There are few countries in the world that have benefited more from China's rapid economic growth than Australia. The boom in exports Australia has enjoyed due to surging Chinese demand, especially for raw materials, is a key reason – perhaps the determining factor – why the country avoided a recession after the 2008 financial crisis. Trade with China is also spurring investment and creating jobs. But simultaneously, Australians are becoming uncomfortable about their growing relationship with China. They fret that the economy is becoming too dependent on China for its growth.

Then in the late 1970s  China’s new supreme leader Deng Xiaoping was persuaded to do a deal: in return for a promise of billions of dollars in Japanese economic aid and technology transfers over subsequent decades, he signed away Chinese citizens’ rights. Thereafter top officials in Beijing proved almost as assiduous as their counterparts in Tokyo and Washington in sweeping victims’ claims under the rug.

Chang’s book posed a threat  not only because it broke the silence on one of the most dishonorable episodes in Japanese history but, far more alarmingly for Tokyo, it highlighted the not-a-penny compensation policy. This had previously been regarded by  Japanologists as the ultimate no-go area in East Asia studies.

After 13 years here, I am fundamentally convinced that there is a unifying "Confucian" conflict -- between self-protection and status projection -- that brands have a fundamental role in resolving. Unlike practically any other country (Korea and Vietnam come closest), China is both boldly ambitious (ladders are meant to be climbed and meritocracy is a cherished value) and regimented, with hierarchical and procedural booby traps for anyone who hasn't mastered the "system." This tension between upward mobility and fear-based conformism shows up everywhere, in every business meetings, in every struggle with a mother-in-law, in every new generation release on the internet. Brands that help consumers simultaneously stand out and fit in have the greatest appeal.

Quote by Mara H:

But choice now includes this whole range of options that are essentially frivolous consumer decisions.

Quote by Mara H:

Chinese abortion clinics advertise on prime-time television and offer discounts to students.

Online Chinese abortion ad.

Quote by NFG:

I just want to grab and shake people and call them idiots, but I reckon I'll wait until Kendrick points out the inevitable other side to the story so I can keep from forming an uneducated opinion.  =)

Chinese consumers were punished severely over the last 10 years for the banking crisis of the late ’90s.  And they’ll be punished even more soon.  Keeping money in the bank didn’t make that much sense, and investment alternatives were limited. However, they could invest in an asset that supposedly never declines in price – a house or condo.  So they did.  As China slams the brakes on the economy and as housing prices fall, the banks will lose plenty of money. But more importantly, it is the people who bought tremendously overpriced houses, and their relatives who lent them money, who will lose.  The wealth and hard work of more than one generation will be lost, and this kind of pain leads to political unrest.