If you move your companies or open up factories in China, be prepared for your entire business to be stolen, its intellectual property, everything. China is a communist dictatorship. To keep its hold on power, China's government has created an environment of extreme nationalism -- almost racism -- and, in a sense, might-makes-right fascism. Such an authoritarian system is arbitrary. The agenda is to steal intellectual capital and knowhow and transfer technology from foreign companies to local Chinese companies.
I've read about many of these cases over the years. One Taiwanese man built a huge orchid nursery, but all his know-how and intellectual capital -- the way to design everything, and even his entire factory was eventually stolen.
Basically -- there is no ethical or moral restraint -- whatever the Chinese authoritarian government perceives they can get away with on the world stage, they will do.
So also, you have extremely cheap labor -- and factories with terrible working conditions.
You have toxic chemicals in milk, in baby toys with lead paint, in children's jewelry with cadmium, it keeps going. You have crabs raised in lakes in China with toxic levels of heavy metals, etc. that were exported to Taiwan.
Truly, if at all possible, if it is made in China, avoid it.
- JL
• See article in investors.com.
• Share this in Mandarin with your Taiwanese friends.
• In the Washington Post
• In the Wall Street Journal
