Fancy a Chinese cracker?

WE are constantly being told how much our future will be harnessed to Asia – nations like India and, in particular, China. China is now “producing” (quotation marks justified, as we’ll come back to this) the sort of laughably dreadful and woeful products that the Japanese began to foist upon us over four decades ago.

There’s one huge difference, however: everybody knew that Japanese products would get better - it was patently evident with every iteration, revised version or revamp of the product. Like the Germans (who also lost the “Foreign Territory Annexation Games” in 1945), it was a given that Japan would establish pride and integrity through the toil and industry of its previously chastened citizens. So what has all this to do with China? Well, China is now starting to utilise raw materials at a rate that makes all other industrialised nations look like they’re sending coal from Newcastle to New Orleans by square-rigged sailing clipper.

But with their unquenchable thirst for raw materials, what are the Chinese turning out? Well, rubbish, actually – pure, unadulterated crap. The Skipper can’t speak for the new wave of Chinese automobiles streaming ashore but has seen enough virtual copies of leading-brand generators, motorcycles, diesel engines and – latterly – outboards to know that they have raised plagiarism to a fine art. There’s only one problem: these products are, for the most part, all show and no go. In some developing nations, it is not unheard of to have to replace a small 2-stroke generator (one quarter of the price of the Japanese product it has been painstakingly made to look like) as much as four times. So why not buy the genuine article first and be done with it?

The Skipper is not saying that this will always be the case with Chinese goods – and it is most certainly NOT the case with anything built in Taiwan – but it would be a foolish dealer who would build a business with a Chinese brand for a linchpin. Many years – no, decades – ago, a major US outboard motor company (defunct and since rescued in the early part of this century) held a huge European distributor conference in Palma, Majorca. One rather loud, drunk, offensively opinionated executive of this behemoth announced with great certainty that “The Japanese will never, ever, make a decent outboard motor.” Mind you, similar pronouncements had also been made in the boardrooms of such august enterprises as British Leyland and the Rootes Group (remember them?).

If the US outboard executive had his time today and made the same prophetic, definitive statement about the Chinese, then we’d probably say he was reasonably on his game. The Skipper reckons there will be 3—night fly-drive trips to the moon before the Chinese create a product that’s totally fit for purpose.