Made in China

This article is about the mark affixed to products manufactured in the People's Republic of China. For other uses, see Made in China (disambiguation).
A "Made in China" label

Made in China or Product of China (simplified Chinese: 中国制造; traditional Chinese: 中國製造; pinyin: zhōngguó zhìzào, sometimes Made in P.R.C.) is a country of origin label affixed to products manufactured in China (excluding Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan).

Terminology

Main article: Two Chinas

Made in China is actually used for the products from Mainland China, governed by the People's Republic of China (PRC). Although the name China is used by both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (ROC), the label "Made in China" is generally affixed to products made in the former. Products made in the ROC do not use the "Made in China" label. Rather, they usually use "Made in Taiwan", "Made in ROC" or "Made in Taiwan, ROC"[1] [Link failed, 1/5/2015] [2]

Branding

American company Apple Inc. has most of its products, such as the IPhone 4S, made under contract by Taiwanese company Foxconn in Shenzen, China.[3]
Proximal location of Made in China text

A series of highly publicized scandals involving faulty products exported from China in recent years has harmed the "Made in China" brand abroad, as 40% of product recalls in the United States were of imports from China.[4] In response to these concerns, Chinese officials have pledged to increase safety inspections for manufactured products and encouraged the proliferation of watchdog journalism to hold "rogue producers" accountable.[5] Nevertheless, new scandals continue to surface. Despite the recent scandals, most consumers do not "consistently check for the country of origin label", and there is little brand awareness for Chinese products in particular.[4] The "Made in China" brand was historically challenged by the US Cold War media campaigns that reported negatively on the brand and publicized hearings on the security of Chinese products in the United States Congress.[6] Conversely, some advertising companies and the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai have since the late 1990s endeavored to shed the Made in China brand of its "cheap and junky" image, as the Made in Japan brand had done.[6]

There is criticism in the United States that Chinese manufacturing firms compete unfairly due to the advantages of state support, copyright infringements, and governmental manipulation of the yuan, which propagates the "Made in China" brand at the cost of lost American jobs.[7][8]

Marketing significance

The Made in China label is one of the most recognizable labels in the world today, due to China's rapidly developing large manufacturing industry, the working labor are cheaper due to China's large population, and China is currently the largest exporter in the world. The Made in China label can be seen on a wide range of goods from clothing to electronics.

U.S. law requires the country of origin of a product to be clearly displayed on the product, or on the product's container if it is enclosed, resulting in many corporations such as Apple labeling their products with "Designed by Apple in California Assembled in China".

Major incidents related to products made in China

On more than one occasion, Chinese-made products have caused global concerns about their quality and safety and resulted in large scale product recalls. In the 2007 Chinese export recalls, for example, product safety institutions in the United States, Canada, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand issued recalls and import bans on a wide range of Chinese-made consumer goods, such as pet food, toys,[9] toothpaste[10][11] and lipstick, and a ban on certain types of seafood.

During the 2008 Chinese export recalls, heparin was announced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) due to contamination of the raw heparin stock imported from China.[12][13] [14] During the 2008 Chinese milk scandal, an estimated 300,000 victims,[15] along with six infants dying from kidney stones and other kidney damage, and a further 860 babies were hospitalised[16][17] because some Chinese-made milk and infant formula were adulterated with melamine.

Lenovo has admitted [18] [19] [20] that it has pre-installed snooping software on an unstated number of machines, dating back as far as the E-series (released in 2010) to the current YOGA series.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Fan, Y. (2008) “Country of origin, branding strategy and internationalisation: the case of Chinese piano companies”, Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, 6:3, 303-319, available at http://hdl.handle.net/2438/1593
  2. ↑ Fan, Y. (2006) “The globalisation of Chinese brands”, Marketing Intelligence &Planning, 24:4, 365-379, available at http://hdl.handle.net/2438/1285
  3. ↑ New York Times: How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Clifton, Rota; Ahmad, Sameena (2009). Brands and Branding. Bloomberg Press. p. 195.
  5. ↑ Kasriel, Daphne (2007-10-10). "Global consumers are edgy about the Made in China brand". Euromonitor. Retrieved 2011-01-01.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Jing, Wang. Brand New China: Advertising, Media, and Commercial Culture. Harvard University Press. pp. 136–137.
  7. ↑ `Made in China’ Tag Makes Hypocrites of Us All, William Pesek, Bloomberg News, October 21, 2011
  8. ↑ The Hidden Cost of "Made in China": Tomorrow's American Jobs, Jeff Bocan, Huffington Post, October 6, 2011
  9. ↑ "Mattel to recall more Chinese-made toys". CNN. Retrieved 14 August 2007.
  10. ↑ Spain withdraws Chinese toothpaste from the oral care market CosmesticsDesigns.com. 12 July 2007.Accessed: 2007-09-05.
  11. ↑ Ramachandran, Arjun (29 August 2007). "Toxic toothpaste alert: buyers beware". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 29 August 2007.
  12. ↑ CBS News, Blood-thinning drug under suspicion
  13. ↑ FDA informational page with information and links about FDA investigation.
  14. ↑ "Heparin's Deadly Side Effects". Time magazine. 13 November 2008. Archived from the original on 21 November 2008. Retrieved 2008-11-16. A month earlier and half a world away, a team of quality-control specialists from Baxter International, the big multinational health-care company (2007 sales: $11.26 billion) based in Deerfield, Ill., arrived in Zhejiang province, China, about two hours by car from Shanghai, to inspect a facility owned by one of its key suppliers. CZ-SPL is a joint venture controlled by Scientific Protein Laboratories LLC (SPL), a Waunakee, Wis., company started in 1976 by Oscar Meyer, of hot-dog fame. (The connection: pigs naturally produce proteins used in pharmaceuticals.) CZ-SPL makes a key ingredient, what in the pharmaceutical business is called an active pharmaceutical ingredient, or API, for a drug called heparin, a blood thinner that is widely used by kidney-dialysis and postsurgical patients to prevent blood clots. The team found little unusual and gave the facility a clean bill of health.
  15. ↑ Branigan, Tania (2 December 2008). "Chinese figures show fivefold rise in babies sick from contaminated milk". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2 April 2010.
  16. ↑ Scott McDonald (22 September 2008). "Nearly 53,000 Chinese children sick from milk". Google. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 21 May 2011.
  17. ↑ Jane Macartney (22 September 2008). "China baby milk scandal spreads as sick toll rises to 13,000". The Times (London). Retrieved 2 April 2010.
  18. ↑ http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1929
  19. ↑ https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA15-051A
  20. ↑ http://www.avg.com/campaign-landing-pages/ww-en/lenovo-superfish

External links