China, rise together or raze alone

Barely a week goes by without Western media reporting on the latest trademark, copyright or IP infringement coming out of China.

Just today I read that Chinese companies are distributing fake Icewine. Touting it to the rising middle-class that are looking for ways to show off that don’t involve a Mercedes and 30,000 RMB dinners. The wine, allegedly made in the Niagara Peninsula – my home away from China, is little more than cheap Shandong grape juice.

If it’s not copyright issues, it’s dangerous products. Not dangerous products? Well, [*hr*] issues then.

This piranha style “journalism” is a product of our times. Of our ability to access and consume news every minute of every day. It’s marketing meets mayhem. It is as if the worst part of media, exploitation through fear, has been thrown it into the petri dish of our wild world and been allowed to grow.

When the Tsunami hit in late 2004, for months the media seemed bent on explaining the world was going to end in one giant title wave. Ditto global warming over the last 12 months due to Al Gore’s emotionally charged documentary.

There are no shortage of examples. And it’s a sad state of affairs.

But as it relates to China, it might just be the kick in the pants the country needs. Thus far China has carried on like there’s no consequence to the fact that they’ve opened their doors just enough to slip hóngbāo‘s through, but not so wide that the all-important checks and balances could come in.

Though a rapid rise, as seen in China, is at first glance a boon for a nation of people that were starving only a few decades ago, the country hasn’t earned its stripes. The initial industrialized nations all earned their current comfortable standard of living through decades (and in some cases, centuries) of horrible living conditions, labour standards, and tyranny.

They overcame them, and are now reaping the rewards. However, in China the climate is much different. It’s as if someone walked into the middle of Time Square with bags full of $100 bills and just started throwing them into the air. There’s a mad cash grab happening in China, and it doesn’t matter how many old ladies get pushed into traffic for getting in the way.

This is where I think media criticism, slantedly critical or not, plays an important role. For years now China’s been the Golden Child. The land of opportunity. The place where the rich get richer, and the poor do too! But now industry in the West is recognizing that having that “Made In China” stamp on their products might not be the nondescript thing that it was a couple years ago.

Made In China represents something else now in the public’s collective consciousness. No longer is it just another in the long line of “Made In Asia” products – now it represents lead in children’s toys, toxics in toothpaste, deadly pet food, and a host of other unacceptable things.

Of course, China’s stance has been to deny, deny, deny. That’s their go to guy. However, what works domestically doesn’t fly on a global scale. Perhaps the Chinese are happy enough to accept that it’s all lies of a jealous West picking on poor China. But outside the rooster-shaped boarders people require accountability. They require it because they’ve earned it.

There’s a tendency in expat circles to think of China as the child that is just growing up, and that should excuse some of these growing pains. This is a complete fallacy. All nations are children really, none of them show the maturity to really be called “adults”. However, China is older than most, but whereas the rest of us learned early to share our toys and play fair, China was raised as an only child – isolated and without many friends.

In recent years the country’s come out of its dusty old house up on the hill and decided it wants to play with the neighborhood kids. The kids are happy to do so – as China’s got some radtastic toys. However what China’s learning, and what Western media’s helping to show (skewed or not), is that playing with a group and playing alone are two entirely different things.