I’m still trying to get my mind around this. Mattel has had to recall a million or so toys because of lead paint. I heard on the radio that the plant manager from the Chinese factory responsible for putting the lead paint on the toys committed suicide.
A gentleman in the business segment of the morning NPR news show was commenting on the suicide story. He said it was fairly common in Japan and Korea for business executives to commit suicide, but not very common in China. He felt that this was possibly a good thing. It might mean the Chinese were caring more about the quality and the safety of their products, and possibly a little less about the bottom line at the expense of everything else.
This is about the time my head starting spinning, or maybe that was from getting out of bed too fast.
I’m not sure anyone committing suicide in these sort of situations is every a good thing. But if it is, there is a whole high-rise full of America executives that need to be queuing up to drop on their swords.
If there ever was a business community more intent on the bottom line over everything else it is the American business community. They are just as good as they are forced to be. American history books are full of examples of American business cutting corners to maximize profit. It may be at the expense of the worker, the consumer, or both. Everything from mining, to meat-packing, to tobacco, to you name it, these businesses have resisted and fought regulation that was going to take away from their profits. For most businesses, how much they care about workers, consumers, or the environment is result of regulation and economic pressure.
The Chinese will find that to compete globally, they will have to meet certain levels of quality and safety as well as cost. The bottom line here probably is that this recall hurt the image of Chinese products. And that in turn hurts profitability across the board. They, like their American counter parts, are going to be just as good as they are forced to be. These corporations doing business with China may have their blinders on, but they are not blind as to what is the Chinese motivation.
On the issue of suicide …
We have a Senator from Lawton named Randy Bass. Google him. He was a journeyman major league player for five years before heading to Japan where he became a legend. He won the triple crown in 1985, the same year he came within one homer of tying Sadaharu Oh’s single season mark. Oh, as manager of Yomiuri Giants, actually had his pitchers intentional walk Bass to keep him from breaking the record. (And we’re giving Bonds shit)
Anyway, Randy helped the Hanshin Tigers win the championship in Japan and became bigger than life. But his teenage son became ill with some disease back in the states and so he made the decision to retire and come home to be with his son.
The failure to sign Bass to a new contract was such a disgrace that the Hanshin executive who failed to sign him killed himself.
How would you like to have that hanging on your head?
Bass is still such a fan favorite in Japan that more than 20 years after that championship, he still makes two trips to Japan each year to do endorsements and sign stuff. He makes six figures.
More on Bass
From Wikipedia..
Bass is also famous in Japan for the “Curse of the Colonel.” Following the 1985 Series victory, revelers celebrated by calling off the names of team members one by one. At each name, a fan who looked like that player would jump into the filthy Dotonbori canal. For Bass, someone threw a life-sized model of Colonel Sanders, the mascot of Kentucky Fried Chicken and the only close-at-hand likeness of a bearded American, into the river. The statue disappeared and is said to have caused the subsequent decade-long dismal performance in the Central League. In an attempt to remove the curse, fans have made repeated attempts to find the model, but so far the attempts have failed. Instead, the fans have been making offerings to the statues of the Colonel for forgiveness. In 2003, when the Tigers returned to the Japan Series after 18 years with one of the worst records in the Central League, many KFC outlets in KÅbe and ÅŒsaka moved their Colonel Sanders statues inside until the series was over to protect them from rabid Tigers fans. The newly replaced Colonel Sanders statue in the Dotonbori KFC branch is bolted down to prevent a repeat of the incident. The Tigers failed to win the series, so the curse is presumably intact.
Now that is funny, I don’t care who you are.
And strange. Both the Col. Sanders appeasement offerings, and going from a baseball hero in Japan to State Senator in Oklahoma.
They used to steal the Popeye statue in Alma, but I never heard of anyone placing offerings in front of Popeye. Now there is a thought, we could sneak into Alma randomaly and start leaving cans of spinach in front of Popeye.