Last week my dishwasher broke. A 10 cent piece of plastic that held one of the baskets in place did what all plastic eventually does - it shattered. Disbelief quickly turned to anger when I remembered that I bought the appliance only 3 and 1/2 years ago. All I could think about was that if the manufacturer had spent a few extra cents on that inadequate plastic bit, my dishwasher would still be completely functional.
Unfortunately, the present-day trend toward poorly made consumer goods doesn't look like it is about to end anytime soon. And there is one nation at the epicenter of this problem - China. China is by far the world's largest producer of cheap and nasty consumer goods. The Western World, particularly the United States, imports container ship after container ship of their substandard products onto our shores every year. China is the reason we don't have nice things anymore.
I realize that this assertion is a bit of an oversimplification. After all, giant multi-national corporations have moved their manufacturing capacity to China because it is generally the cheapest place to produce goods. If China didn't exist, our corporate overlords would have relocated to some other sweatshop country, like Vietnam or Bangladesh.
And yet, the idea that Chinese manufacturing and nice things are mutually exclusive isn't so farfetched. Since 2013, China has been the world's largest producer of manufactured goods, with over 23% of global output. In spite of its manufacturing prowess, however, China is nowhere to be found when it comes to finely crafted luxury goods and other high quality items.
This is a shocking revelation when one considers that China became the world's largest market for luxury goods in 2012. But wealthy Chinese generally don't purchase Chinese-made luxury goods. Instead, they buy foreign branded and manufactured nice things.
Foreign brands, like Burberry, Cartier, Piaget, Louis Vuitton, Bulgari and Coach, are snapped up by Chinese citizens because they are considered to be the best quality luxury goods available. And these international luxury brands are inevitably not made in China. Rather, they are generally produced in traditional luxury goods production centers, like Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S.
It isn't a coincidence most global luxury brands have opted to keep their manufacturing capacity in developed countries intact. The Western World has a strong and unbroken tradition of fine craftsmanship stretching back hundreds of years. If you want the best of the best, the very nicest of nice things, then you want something from a small Italian or Swiss workshop where techniques have been passed down uninterrupted from generation to generation. What you don't want is a cobbled-together, not-quite-luxury-item assembled by an overworked Chinese peasant slaving away in a Shanghai sweatshop.
Now there are a handful of exceptions to this rule. There are a few Chinese jewelry companies, like Chow Tai Fook and Chow Sang Sang, that produce very high quality goods. However, it should be noted that most of these Chinese luxury goods companies were founded in Hong Kong. This is notable because Hong Kong was a British colony for more than 150 years, from 1841 until 1997. As a result, the native population of Hong Kong absorbed certain British cultural traditions, including a healthy respect for high quality craftsmanship and a general appreciation of the effort and pride necessary to create truly nice things.
Chinese jade carving is another luxury tradition that 40 years of oppressive communist rule on the mainland managed to decimate. Even today, most jade carving in China takes place in the city of Shenzen, which is located immediately adjacent to that most culturally distinct of Chinese cities, Hong Kong. While some jade carvings that come out of China today are truly superb, far too many are derivative and uninspired. This is in stark contrast to the amazingly skilled and inventive jade carvings that are becoming the norm among Western artists.
The fact is that most goods, particularly mass-produced goods, from China are junk. A handful of wonderful Chinese luxury goods float in an endless sea of cheap Chinese garbage. But these sparse Chinese luxury goods are all too often exceptions to the rule.
Most of the time the Chinese response to Western luxury brands is to create knock-off, unlicensed imitations. China has become a global byword for poor quality control and shoddy goods. No wonder the Chinese buy foreign luxury goods!
It is not that the Chinese people are genetically incapable of making nice things. To the contrary, Chinese civilization perfected some of the world's most enduring art forms many centuries ago. These masterpieces have ranged from ancient Shang dynasty ceremonial bronzes to superlative Qing dynasty jade carvings to instantly-recognizable Ming dynasty blue and white porcelain.
The problem is that modern Chinese culture does not value attention to detail, artistic excellence or customer satisfaction. Instead, the prevailing Chinese business culture views customers as a resource to be exploited. Any sales technique, regardless of how unethical, is deemed acceptable by Chinese suppliers bent on separating naïve Westerners from their money. Slipshod mass-production of aesthetically boring, derivative works is the order of the day in China.
As terrible as it sounds, the relocation of global manufacturing to the Middle Kingdom has led to the end of nice things for most Western consumers. I believe that this makes high-quality, well-constructed antiques even more desirable. Savvy investors should take note.
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