Having said that, there are also companies that make an effort in China. Needless to say they are more expensive. Not western expensive, but more expensive nevertheless. Those products are the ones that will get China a TRUE position on the world map. But with those companies being few and thinly spread, that will take quite a while…

That what happened to me more than once and I can assure you – the feeling is not good.
The same is here… And why Chinese copies cost less? Because they don’t need research facilities, they don’t need to hire designers and engineers – the only thing that they need to do – copy one on one.

This is a wonderful and well thought out article.

I like that your focus isnt on the consumer ethics of buying or not buying foreign or knock offs but directly at those responsible.

Its only natural that the technology drift would happen. Whats surprising is how blinded some have been to this eventuality.

For me it will be interesting to see what happens to Western based oil companies vs chinese as many western based companies are getting things like drilling rigs built in china and its only a matter of time before that technological advantage is eroded and the cheap labour aspect starts to make Western based companies uncompetitive. Right now it the “quality” or ability of the people thats preventing this from happening. Time will tell if that changes.

China though is in a precarious position as they are almost completely reliant on their cheap export industry. Among other challenges stemming from the one party decision making process.

I read an article not so long ago that discussed the education issue for china. If I recall correctly they mentioned that per capita china puts out more “engineers” than any other country. Per capita. Yet these “engineers” are not being hired by international firms because they lack the skills to do the job. This is not the case at all with India.

China will live and die by its one party state. One the one hand it gives them advantages over India in that decisions can be made quickly as it is top down and non-democratic. This we see with Chinas ability to develop “hard” products such as high speed trains. The disadvantage is that there is no need to develop the “soft” products such as the education of people because the education is tightly controlled.

India on the other hand is a democracy and for all the corruption and BS that happens that democracy allows a robust education system to flourish.

So will “hard” technology or “soft” education win in the end? That remains to be seen.

Second, if you start being greedy, you end up in the grave. That’s all. 

But as it was already mentioned in the post … some stuff for photgs is reaaaally overpriced. I mean you can buy a chair for example for 10$, and almost the same chair for photographer costs 100$. Ok, it might be heavy duty etc etc … but you can buy 10. If you are really a pro, you buy the best you can get for the peace of your mind and know that this will last long, won’t give you any surprises.

And imagine quite opposite side, there are only profoto lights, costs 5k+, how many people especially in countries with lower economic could afford that?

Stealing is bad, everyone agrees with that, but I don’t think that this situation is a surprise for anyone. Pro brands have their advantages and a real pro gets pro equipment so `china stole` thing is not an issue here. Sometimes it’s even better, some people would not start in photography if they had to buy expensive gear just from the begging, they already buy expensive cameras and lenses. And in the end if they go pro, they go for the real thing.