brand china

First it was toys, food, then pyjamas. And recalls starting sprouting from different countries. As the recalls and announcements came, the fear spread. Now a government task force on product quality has been set up chaired by Vice Premier Wu Yi. And there is a campaign.
How we appreciate the SISIR mark of quality assurance.


CAN BRAND CHINA SURVIVE? (from TODAY, Sat 25 Aug 07)
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China's soft power extends beyond current crisis
Venessa Lee
venessa@mediacorp.com.sg

A MONTH before the start of the 2004 Olympics in Greece, the IT system
needed for the Games was still incomplete, according to Mr Jiang Sheng, a
Chinese computer engineer who was in Athens working on the project.
In contrast, Mr Jiang and his team have finished the IT infrastructure for
next year's Beijing Games, a year before the athletes even arrive.
With a network of more than 10,000 PCs and servers, which will keep the
media informed and service some 200,000 athletes, officials and
journalists, Mr Jiang knows what is at stake.
"One weak point can leave the whole system dead," he told the Guardian.
"We can make no mistake."

For any country, hosting the Olympics is a matter of great pride. But for
China, a nation so self-conscious of being a nascent superpower, the Games
have also been explicitly linked to its "soft power".
Ms Deng Yaping, an Olympic table-tennis gold medallist turned government
adviser, has been quoted in the China Daily as saying: "While improving
infrastructure in the preparation for the Games, we should also put in
enough efforts to strengthen our 'soft power' and polish the national
image."
Soft power, a term coined by Harvard professor Joseph Nye in 1990, refers
to the ability of a state to get what it wants by attracting or persuading
others, as opposed to using coercion or hard power, most often represented
by military might.
Soft power is about people voluntarily seeking to associate with, or
emulate another country's culture, lifestyle and values.
Diplomacy, cultural exchanges and dialogue forums are soft power tools;
more abstract examples include democratic ideals, Nike, iPods, Hollywood
and Bollywood - anything that makes the wielder of soft power appealing
to others.

Given that image is crucial to the notion of soft power, Brand China seems
to be in deep trouble. This week, flammable children's pyjamas and
formaldehyde-laced clothes joined a growing list of China-made goods that
foreign regulators, particularly in the United States, have rejected. This
includes the recall of more than 20 million unsafe toys, tainted food
products and faulty tyres.
Officials, stressing that more than 99 per cent of Chinese exports are
safe, have gone on a PR offensive.
China has returned a few US goods that it alleges are sub-standard, and
hit back at what it calls Washington's increasing protectionism in its
recalls of Chinese goods. Vice-Premier Wu Yi, Beijing's top
troubleshooter, has been appointed to head a task force to improve food
and product safety.
Some analysts are confident that Brand China will weather the storm.
Mr Joshua Kurlantzick, writing in the Guardian before the latest product
scandal broke, said: "If China at home is like America during the
Industrial Revolution - struggling to develop rules for its chaotic
factories - China abroad resembles the United States of that time, too: a
far more influential nation than other existing powers care to admit."
Mr Kurlantzick's book, Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is
Transforming the World, published earlier this year, focuses on how China
uses its considerable soft power - including culture, investment, foreign
aid and public diplomacy - to influence other countries.
Chinese universities exchange thousands of students and staff each year
with campuses abroad. The first of the Confucius Institutes - which
promotes Chinese language and culture, and are similar to the UK's British
Councils - was built only three years ago in Uzbekistan.
Today, there are about 150 Confucius Institutes spread across 52
countries. Chinese diplomacy is becoming increasingly sophisticated,
analysts say.
In South-east Asia, one example of China's successful diplomacy occurred
in 2003, when it became the first major non-Asean country to accede to the
Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), noted Assistant Professor Li
Mingjiang of Singapore's S Rajaratnam School of International Studies
(RSIS). The Asean non-aggression pact is aimed at promoting regional
stability.
"In a region where there is a historic fear of China, they are promoting
the idea that China is a friendly partner," Mr Kurlantzick has said.
In Africa, Asia and Latin America, China has signed numerous deals
promising aid with no strings attached, unlike many Western countries and
the World Bank, which have traditionally asked for pledges of political
and economic reforms. In June, China unveiled a US$20 billion ($30.5
billion) package of loans to Africa.
Dr Michael Heng, a Senior Research Fellow at Singapore's East Asian
Institute (EAI), explained the advantage of this strategy: "No aid is
totally altruistic. The receivers of this aid will feel obliged to help
China at a certain point in time. It would be smarter for China not to
expect an immediate return, or ask for it."
This strategy is not new - China has been dispensing this kind of foreign
aid since the 1960s.
In Africa, China has been criticised, often by the West, for its
controversial cosiness with oil-rich Sudan, which has been blamed for the
devastating conflict in the Dafur region.
Energy-hungry China is Sudan's top oil buyer and a key weapons supplier to
Khartoum. In Somalia - off-limits for American companies since it
descended into chaotic violence in the early 1990s - China state firms
have won permission to search for oil, the Financial Times reported.
This raging need for resources to fuel its booming economy is intertwined
with the soft power that China has accrued, by wooing nations across the
globe via increased trade pacts, investment and aid.
According to Dr Chen Gang, a visiting Research Fellow at EAI, "those
nations that have the most soft power are usually also economically the
strongest, for example, the United States and European countries".
Current figures show that China, a developing country, is on track to
overtake Germany as the world's third biggest economy in a few years.
Factories in China, for example, produce goods on a global scale - they
already make 80 per cent of the world's toys.
In some ways, China, and particularly the economic promise it represents,
is wooed by other nations, as much as it courts others.

There are clearly gaps in China's soft power.
Apart from the "Made in China" crisis, other problems bedevil the image
China presents to the world, including environmental disasters, human
rights' issues, corruption and rampant piracy.
Mr Paul Danahar, the BBC's Asia Bureau Chief, wrote recently: "China's
answer to too many problems is to quickly execute a few people and hope
that's enough."
Mr Zheng Xiaoyu, the former chief of China's food and drug safety
watchdog, was executed in July for accepting bribes linked to dodgy
medicines blamed for several deaths.
Despite Beijing's frequent proclamations over its commitment to a
"peaceful rise", other governments still mistrust its hard power. Alarm
bells rang in the Pentagon and elsewhere when China's announced in March
that it would boost military spending by 17.8 per cent this year.
China - whose 2.3-million-strong military is the world's largest - has
grown military spending by double digits annually since the early 1990s.
Prof Li of RSIS points to another chink in China's soft power: "On
political culture, China is pretty weak. Today's world is basically
dominated by Western values such as human rights."
While some governments may dispute this view, democracy and a high regard
for human rights remain valid goals for most of the world's peoples.
China works hard in its bid to convince other nations, including oil-rich
countries like Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Iran, that its
blueprint of centralised government, and liberalised economics could serve
as a model for their own societies.
In some quarters, this has been criticised as encouraging authoritarian
regimes, especially in Africa.
Perhaps, as Dr Heng of EAI suggests, "a better way to think of soft power
is in the civilisational sense". Dr Chen, who believes it is "still too
early" to make definitive conclusions about China's lasting influence,
said: "I think soft power is formed over hundreds of years."
A superpower emerges over the long haul and its ascendancy and
establishment is viewed with a complicated range of emotions - including
desire, fear, loathing and suspicion. Just ask the United States.


CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED TO PROTECT 'MADE IN CHINA' BRAND
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BEIJING -- China, under pressure to improve the quality of exports as
varied as food and toys, will run a four-month campaign to weed out
defective products and repair the damage to the nation's brands.
The campaign, which will run from September to December covers farm
produce, processed and retail food, catering, drugs, pork, imports and
exports, appliances and toys that affect health, the central government
said on its website yesterday.
"This is a special battle to protect the interest and health of the
masses, the prestige of Chinese products and our nation's image," said
Vice Premier Wu Yi, who was appointed last week to head a government task
force to enhance product quality.
The world's largest exporter of consumer goods, including toys and
clothes, is battling a backlash against the "Made-in-China" brand after
numerous companies worldwide recalled Chinese-made products for failing
quality standards.
Ms Wu must ensure food safety and avoid any embarrassment while the
Communist Party's leadership election is in session in October, and while
the party hosts US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in Beijing in
December.
Specific goals of the Chinese government's programme include ensuring that
all food producers have business and hygiene licences, eradicating the use
of banned pesticides, agricultural chemicals and feed additives.
The programme must also strengthen the inspection of imports and exports
of toys, lamps, and small appliances.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday it is working
to fast-track improvements of food and products regulation in China.
"The Food and Safety department of the World Health Organization in Geneva
has been working with the government of China to streamline their
regulation of food and products," WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan
said.
"The government of China is committed to improving their system," she
added. - agencies