Starting the year and this blog out in China

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Trip Start Jan 01, 2009 Trip End Dec 31, 2009 Next
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  Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
Thursday, January 1, 2009

Like I said in the last blog post from the previous travelogue, this year is shaping up to be a good one. One of the reasons that I left off, is because I'm getting to leave this manufacturer, knowing that I influenced the decision to pull all, not just this project's but all, of our equipment out of their shop. I see this as justice for the incompetence, arrogance, obstinacy, and disrespect that they have shown to my company and to me.

Now a buddy of mine, who I was talking with about this, mentioned that's the price to pay with dealing with a Chinese company. I disagree. That's the price you pay for dealing with a state-owned company. A company that is backed by the government is no longer concerned with profitability. And since profitability comes from making customers happy. The correlation is that they are not concerned with the customer's happiness. Which is what we're seeing here. I, and the upper management from my company, have stated what we do and do not want them to do here. They do not care, and have clearly stated that they will do things their way, even if it means further delaying our schedule, thereby costing us money. There are many companies in China that are private. And after speaking with our independent inspector here, those companies are nothing like what he is seeing here. So why should we give this company our business?

So after thinking about what I told my buddy, what are we to expect from the bailout? Are the financial and automotive companies going to treat us, the customers, well, knowing that their business will be supported by the government when we stop supporting them? How is that good for ANYONE but the companies? What are we getting out of it, other than a huge amount of debt and absolutely no accountability? If we, as a people, lose confidence in a company, it's products, or it's management, and cannot take our business elsewhere without the government supporting the failures, then what we have is not a free society.

That's an argument that I've heard from the Chinese over here. How can the U.S. criticize China for subsidizing and backing it's state-owned companies, when the U.S. has essentially done the same thing to financial institutions (and now GM and Chrysler) when the times got "too tough". I have no counter-argument to make!

I believe that if a company has made decisions bad enough to fail, they should. And if they are "too large to fail", as the argument has been made, then shouldn't that company have been broken up under the Sherman act? If one company's, or oligopoly's, failure can influence the market that harshly, doesn't that qualify?

Anyways, it's still shaping up to be a great 2009!

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