Made in the Global Village

Made in the Global Village
China Post editorial
by Bevin Chu
April 14, 2009

A Pan Green student group has been picketing the National Palace Museum (NPM) for selling souvenir replicas of the famed Jadeite Cabbage sculpture that were, god forbid, "Made in China." 

The students, who wore T-shirts reading “I Love MIT,” i.e., "I Love products Made in Taiwan," expressed their disapproval by hacking souvenir replicas of the Jadeite Cabbage sculpture into tiny bits with meat cleavers, in front of the National Palace Museum entrance.

Never mind that the original Jadeite Cabbage masterpiece was itself "Made in China," i.e., mainland China.  Never mind that every one of the tens of thousands of masterpieces of calligraphy, painting, embroidery, bronzes, ceramics, and sculpture within the vaults of the National Palace Museum were all "Made in China." Never mind that according to the Taiwan independence movement's own "logic," the tens of thousands of priceless masterpieces were brought here by archvillain Chiang Kai-shek, therefore don't even belong to "Taiwan" and ought to be returned to "China," ASAP. 

Never mind that the Republic of China government in Taipei has a legitimate claim to them only because it correctly insists it is the rightful government of China as a whole.

Taiwan independence fanatics, like all fanatics, are humorless fanatics. The irony of Pan Green Taiwan independence fanatics protesting that souvenir replicas of "Made in China" art masterpieces were also "Made in China," instead of being "Made in Taiwan," was apparently lost on them.

One student said that “During the economic recession, the government should promote local industry instead of importing products from China.”

Never mind that products made locally, on Taiwan, are also "Made in China." They are made in the Republic of China. They are made in the Taiwan region of the Republic of China, as opposed to the mainland region of the Republic of China.  

Atavistic and misguided "nativist" sentiment is of course not confined to Taiwan independence fanatics.

A few years ago Apple customers in the US were mired in a similar controversy, when they discovered that their iPod minis were "Designed in California. Assembled in China."

Some Apple customers went into nativist "Buy American" fits, eerily reminiscent of the nativist "I Love MIT" fits the Pan Green protestors are currently going through.

Other, more sober voices injected a note of reason into the debate. One Apple customer with a deeper understanding of economics wrote:

Welcome to the 21st Century. If you object to buying an iPod on the grounds that "Apple sends jobs overseas," you aren't seeing the Big Picture. Would you be willing to spend $500 on an iPod mini because Apple paid Americans five times as much to tell customers to "Upgrade the firmware" and "Reset the iPod?" Should Apple keep the price at $250, employ Americans for support, and break even or lose money? If they did, there would be no iPod mini. All this talk of jobs going overseas should be a huge motivator for the youth of America. You're going to have to work a lot harder to compete in the global economy. If a customer rep job going to India makes you feel personally threatened, you need to study a lot harder to get a job that requires far more skill and is less likely to get shipped overseas.

That Apple customer might well have been addressing the Pan Green students wasting their valuable time destroying souvenir replicas of the Jadeite Cabbage, instead of hitting the books to ensure their economic viability in the emerging Global Economy.

Pan Green "Taiwanese" ultranationalism is an outdated historical relic. the sad product of prolonged geographical isolation. The only color that will matter in the emerging Global Economy, is not the Green of one's flag, but the Green of one's money.

The emerging Global Economy, and its correlate, the Global Village, are the result of the long overdue and highly welcome reintegration of the human race by means of technology, specifically, advanced means of transportation and communication. 

Not so very long ago, Europe consisted of unrelentingly hostile nations that slaughtered each other by the millions. As one traces the evolution of the Eurozone, Sun Yat-sen's ideal of "Tian Xia Wei Gong" appears less and less Utopian and more and more inevitable with each passing year.

Fomenting ethnic hatred among one's fellow countrymen by artificially dividing them into "Chinese" on one side of the Taiwan Strait and "Taiwanese" on the other side of the Taiwan Strait, is not merely morally contemptible, but historically outdated and economically self-defeating.

Were the souvenir replicas of the Jadeite Cabbage sculpture "Made in China" or "Made in Taiwan?" Or were they "Made in the Global Village?"