China, Britain and the Nunzilla Conundrum: Anna Chen on BBC Radio 4

China, Britain and the Nunzilla Conundrum
Presented by Anna Chen, produced by Sally Heaven.
BBC RADIO 4 – 11.00-11.30am
Friday 19 March 2010
Listen for seven days after broadcast here

Ever wondered about the origins of those brightly-coloured novelty items for grown-ups, so handy when you’re pushed for a cheap prezzy or in need of a quick chuckle? Those cutesy objects seemingly designed to separate us from our disposable income? Upend the packaging and it’s a sure bet that it reads “Made In China”.

The star turns — the three-inch high fire-breathing wind-up Nunzilla, Dashboard Jesus, and the Billy Bass trophy-mounted fish that sings, “Don’t worry, be happy” and drove us all nuts — were marketing phenomena in an industry now worth $35 billion worldwide and of which China has a whopping sixty per cent.

In China, Britain and the Nunzilla Conundrum, I follow the manufacture of one such item — Mummy Mike, a little man-shaped rubber-band holder — from its design at Suck UK in East London, through production in China, to sale in Birmingham.

The Birmingham Trade Fair at the NEC was a cornucopia of tat. I never realised I needed so much utterly useless merchandise until I set foot in its hangar-sized halls. Ooh, shiny!

The Brands of China hall, however, was a different story: every one of the fifty or so Chinese stalls sold purely practical goods. From handbags to Develop Your Pecs exercisers, I searched in vain for items as audaciously pointless as the giftware designed in Britain, made in China and consumed in the West. One looked promising from a distance, but it was a pet stall. Those brightly coloured trifles were actually dayglo-pink and lime doggy dumbbells. Dogs in China do silly. People don’t.

As one Xiamen factory worker said of the Dashboard Jesus, “For people like me who work for other people, we only earn a small salary. We don't need this. I don't have anywhere to put it — our apartments are rented — we don't have any assets to protect, or pray for.”

Nunzilla

Perhaps a taste for tat signals an economy in the later stages of capitalism which, staring into the abyss, finds solace (if no actual solution) in fits of giggles. For the Chinese, with memories of deprivation rooted in centuries of foreign exploitation, imperial rule and civil wars, wasting money on trivia is serious business.

According to Jude Biddulph, Designer-In-Chief at Suck UK, better-off Chinese aspire to European goods. He says the wealthy Chinese do buy British, but only expensive high-end pieces such as the illuminated glass and steel coffee table or a leather James Bond Villain’s Chair.

“People want to buy into the brand,” he says of a nation entering the equivalent of Britain’s 1960s economic explosion. “There is extreme wealth, and they aspire to European brands and European-made products.”

While tiny but growing numbers of Chinese buy high-end goods, those of us stuck in our UK recession shore up the giftware market by buying at the cheap end. For, as trader Malcolm Ford says, in a recession people cut back on the biggies. “They don’t feel as if they’re human if they’re not spending money on something.” And this is where cheap amusing trinkets play their part. Retail therapy really does make you feel good, albeit briefly.

Or would we be better off without it? Producing Stuff for Western consumption generates a third of China’s carbon emissions. And isn’t its glittering spell turning us into lotus-eaters, pacifying our critical faculties like some new opiate of the masses? The reality: China and the West are hardly going to give up on a $35 billion worldwide industry.

Mummy Mike

Just as the Japanese were once known for turning out cheap goods but learnt fast and ended up dominating the car and electrical markets, Chinese manufacturers are honing their skills with the giftware trade. My beautiful Mac laptop and half my cosmetics (with their posh French labels) are now made in China.

Simon Collinson of Warwick University Business School says change is underway. “As the Chinese get better at understanding what is needed in the West they will get better, not just at designing, but actally coming up with new innovations.”

The good news is that the government is closing down the bad old factories, with fewer but highter-tech facilities surviving. Only 3,000 out of 8,000 toy factories survive. And in 2006 they would have relaxed their restrictions on unions had the American Chamber of Commerce, backed up by the Europeans, not lobbied hard to stop it happening.

Progress is slow but it is happening in some areas even if the new super-rich are hoovering up the lion's share of the wealth leaving the poor behind. But as the quality of China’s goods get better, as more and more of the population take a share in the form of better wages and conditions, it loses its competitiveness in the markets — if you see naked profit and mindless competition as a good thing. Some are already anticipating a time when Africa becomes China’s workshop, just as China was ours, whilst capitalism plays musical chairs and another economic arena flowers and withers.

Watch what happened to us, China, and learn from our example.

China, Britain and the Nunzilla Conundrum
Presented by Anna Chen
Produced by Sally Heaven.
BBC RADIO 4 – 11.00-11.30am
Friday 19 March 2010
PICK OF THE DAY Guardian Guide, Radio Times and Daily Telegraph
which says, " ... tying it with a ribbon of her wit. "
PICK OF THE WEEK Sunday Telegraph
" ... refreshingly original ..."
Recommended by the Diocese of Liverpool

Listen for seven days after Friday’s broadcast here
Angry nuns and singing fish - gifts 'Made in China'
By Anna Chen, Presenter, China, Britain and the Nunzilla Conundrum
Photo of Anna Chen at iPlayer by Sukey Parnell