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China is a Communist Country with many state owned institutions but despite that fact, many that do business with it claim it's markets are capitalist, and by doing so make the unspoken assertion that the Government of China has no impact on the markets. That seems to contradict the assertions put by the same people in regards to our American markets and the Government. I guess when there is a profit to be made, if it is Hitler's Socialist or Fascists or Nationalist Germany, or Communist China, we should not let those little things get in the way.
In a sense, there are. China's long economic rise began in the 1980s when the communist government began dismantling inefficient state-owned companies and expanding the private sector, allowing greater scope for unfettered capitalism. But in recent years, the pendulum has begun to swing the other way. Many of China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have grown into giants, eclipsing the relatively young, private companies that have contributed heavily to the country's progress. That trend is being reinforced as China implements economic stimulus measures that in practice boost state-owned giants while private companies are left largely to fend for themselves. (See pictures of China's electronic waste village.
The planned corporation, with a registered capital of 1.04 trillion yuan ($165.73 billion), will be a wholly State-owned enterprise administered by the central government and supervised by the Ministry of Transport and the future State Railways Administration (SRA), according to a statement posted on the government website.
The state remains a significant player in the Chinese economy. State businesses receive more than three quarters of the country’s capital. The state owns more than 65 percent of the country’s fixed assets. This means local officials—who make more than three quarters of all state investment decisions—have an overwhelming influence on running these state businesses. They control the dispensation of capital, land, and sometimes even labor. Climbing the greasy ladder of status, power, and wealth within China’s vast political and bureaucratic network depends on results. And results are usually defined by whether the dominant state-controlled sectors in one’s township, city, or county are meeting centrally mandated targets. [Source: John Lee, Newsweek, July 30, 2010, Lee is a foreign-policy research fellow at the center for Independent Studies and a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Will China Fail?
The Chinese government controls the majority of large companies in the country. In many fields and industries, resources have been accumulated and controlled by several state-owned, monopolistic enterprises. According to China's Ministry of Finance, assets of all state enterprises in 2008 totaled about $6 trillion, equal to 133 percent of annual economic output that year. By comparison, total assets of the agency that controls government enterprises in France, whose dirigiste policies give it one of the biggest state sectors among major Western economies, were €539 billion ($686 billion) in 2008, about 28 percent of the size of France's economy. Source: Jason Dean, Andrew Browne and Shai Oster.Wall Street Journal, November 16 2010
The purpose of this thread though is not to debate if they are communist or capitalist but what effects their markets have on their people when it is unregulated and the people are not protected.
GEORGE TOWN: Enforcement officers carted away 378 eggs from three stalls at the Pulau Tikus market following claims that fakes were being sold there.
Seven officers from the Penang Domestic Affairs, Co-operatives and Consumerism Department arrived at about 10am yesterday and seized three trays comprising 90 eggs from each of the stalls.
An hour later, a four-member team from the State Health Department collected more samples.
The seizures came in the wake of yesterday's news report that fake eggs, allegedly filled with chemicals, were found in Penang.
China’s poor treated to fake rice made from plastic: report
This goes against the meme that those out to seeking profits would not harm their customers.
Especially their own countrymen.
Quote:
China’s history with food safety is a rocky one, but even in the annals of robbery and abuse, this will go down in infamy.
Various reports in Singapore media have said that Chinese companies are mass producing fake rice made, in part, out of plastic, according to one online
publication Very Vietnam.
The “rice” is made by mixing potatoes, sweet potatoes and plastic. The potatoes are first formed into the shape of rice grains. Industrial synthetic resins
are then added to the mix. The rice reportedly stays hard even after being cooked.
In the past few days, a number of sites, including Shanghaiist and Rocket News, have reported on a strange phenomenon — Chinese fraudsters filling walnut
shells with rocks and cement and selling them as fresh walnuts.
This video, which explains how to spot a fake walnut, has also been doing the rounds:
The trade in fake walnuts may sound ridiculous, but there is some more evidence to support the stories.
For example, last year Chinese news site Netease reported that a man in Zhengzhou city, Henan province, had bought 2.5 kilos of walnut from a street vendor
only to find they were full of concrete chips.
The scam goes like this — the walnut husk had been emptied of its nutmeat, filled with concrete and paper and then glued shut again. For the fraudsters, they
can almost double their profits with the trick, selling both the nutmeat and the fake nuts.
Such a trade makes sense in China, where walnuts have become ridiculously expensive over the last few years — from 350 yuan 10 years ago, to as much as 3,500
yuan, or 20,000 - 30,000 yuan (almost $5,000) last year.
The effects of pollution in an unregulated market:
Some say that the pollution is an unnecessary evil in the build up of their markets, similar to what the US experienced in our earlier years, such as the Industrial Revolution.
The problem with that thinking though, is most American's benefited from that arrangement because they were not only the producers, but the main consumers as well. China's main customers are from other countries, and most could not afford to buy what the are making. It is exploitation.
They do not seem to happy with the arrangements
Citarum River Pollution
Yellow River Pollution
China is home to 20 of the world’s 30 most polluted cities.
I do not buy any food products from China because fakes are every where and it is hard to tell what is real and what is fake. Therefor I try to buy local food or at least American where ever possible. The hardest part is trying to find American grown or wild caught seafood as something like 97% of the fish sold in the US are now imported with China having the largest share.
I once bought a small car vacuum cleaner from a local big box store and thought what a great buy it was for 20 bucks, when the Black and Deckers were going for $30.
The vacuum cleaner would not even suck up a blade of dead grass.
I opened it up and it had a small motor in it that had hardly enough wattage to turn the belt it was attached to.
The product was of course, made in China.
Anyone care for a state of the art Harddrive?
Quote:
Welcome to today's episode of "You Get What You Pay For," starring some poor sap in Russia who bought an external hard drive in China for a "very, very low price." It seemed like a bargain, until the schmo noticed that video files were picking up from the tail end, as if the preceding footage had vanished. When the folks at a local repair shop tore the disk apart they found a dinky 128MB thumb drive running in a loop, emptying itself when full only to start saving more data. Laugh all you want, but the repair guys (and us, frankly) are still scratching their heads as to how those scam artists pulled off this mod in the first place.
I do not buy any food products from China because fakes are every where and it is hard to tell what is real and what is fake. Therefor I try to buy local food or at least American where ever possible. The hardest part is trying to find American grown or wild caught seafood as something like 97% of the fish sold in the US are now imported with China having the largest share.
I am extra cautious as well when buying food.
If it does not say made in the USA, I pass it on.
Tilapia no matter where it is made though is one example of fish I stay away from.
They are grown in a disgusting environment of feces and polluted water.
I shudder to think the conditions they are in, in China.
Organic food sales have taken off in China after a series of safety scares, including the disclosure that one in 10 meals is cooked using oil dredged from the sewer.
“There is no way to prevent this oil from returning to the food chain,” said Zhen Zhiquan, 32, the manager of a company in Qingdao that turns sewage oil into biofuel.
“Companies like us buy around 10 to 20 per cent of the oil that is dredged from the sewers, but at least 80 per cent is recycled,” he said.
Can you smell the fresh air through the pollution?
I know I can't.
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