Saturday, January 10, 2004
Made in USA
There's an old story that a Japanese town was renamed to 'Usa' so that they could stamp their exports 'Made in USA.' The story wasn't true. Probably the more surprising thing for anyone born after 1970 is that there was a time when 'Made in Japan' symbolized cheap, often shoddy goods. Today, people often say that about products marked 'Made in China'. It's hard to find a toy or piece of inexpensive electronics that wasn't made, or at least assembled, in China. But China is moving up the food chain quickly. For example, two of the fastest-growing communications-equipment makers are Chinese companies. As was the case in Japan, Chinese companies can't compete solely with low engineering and manufacturing costs. They need to invest more on R&D and develop their own attractive and innovative products.
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