Classe move to China

Lower Classe now?

Too muddle headed on issues of relevancy to respond. Stalin and Mao were monstrous, that wasn't really the issue and you don't have to persuade me on that count. If you want to believe that Classe amps will be built in a sweatshop with slave labor, I think you are delusional - which doesn't mean I'm a member of the Mao fan club.

Another dead-on post, Elizabeth! You and I are completely of the same mind on this issue.

I spent three weeks in China in 2010, went to a lot of places westerners don't often go, and had a chance to have some extended (and frank) discussions with a party member who works on economic development for the government in Beijing. China has huge economic challenges -- they have ten million peasants (their word -- we would call them "farmers") moving into the urban population centers each year -- air and water quality in the major population centers make the 1960s in the United States look idyllic by comparison. And working conditions in the major manufacturing centers are abysmal.

So this creates, for us, an almost insurmountable challenge -- we are attempting to compete with a massively growing economy that has an artificially depressed currency, a desperate need to feed and house a population almost four times ours, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve economic security and prosperity -- even at an extraordarily high human and environmental cost.

Our advantages are creativity, collaboration (not a skill being taught in Chinese schools or businesses), open communication, and compassion. Our challenge is to use these things to find our niche in the global economy -- the goods and services we can provide to the rest of the world more efficiently than anyone else. And to do that, we need innovative thinking across the board, from business and government alike, on a scale we've never experienced before.

I am not optimistic.

That sounds very accurate. Accelerated development and catch up at any price. The hope is that a growing middle class will bring about improvements to their society as a whole. It seems a strong middle class is the foundation of progressive societies. They are not there yet, but the urban middle class is certainly growing and PCI growing at a very rapid pace.

I assume that Classe assumes that there enough folks willing to buy goods made in than not, and that the product would be of equal quality with Quebec QC over site. I think the makers of Prada assumed the same.

I personally only own hand made products made in the US and Canada, but that is because I thought they were the best products. I would even consider a quality Japaneese product, in spite of Pearl Harbor and Manchuria. I think US should rely on making the very best products, not the cheapest. We can do it, and it works pretty well for German industry.