I assume that HP has a good relationship with a PR firm used to handling crisis management in China. The photo is from a 2009 Greenpeace protest against HP last year. I wonder if HP has already met with their consultants on this issue?

A couple of isolated tort cases would be unfortunate, but certainly no cause for alarm. However, there seems to be much more going on. The Financial Times has details today:

Chinese lawyers have filed a complaint on behalf of more than 170 consumers against Hewlett-Packard, requesting that the Chinese government order a recall of allegedly faulty notebook computers.

Uh oh. Some good news/bad news for HP here. The good news is that the complaint was not a lawsuit. The bad news is that it was a formal request sent to the General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ), asking the government to open an investigation, institute a recall of the laptops, and order HP to provide compensation.

This is probably a smart move on the part of the lawyers involved. Class action lawsuits are not really a formal process here, although the functional equivalent is possible. However, big lawsuits are frowned upon and not in keeping with a Harmonious Society. On the other hand, mediation led by a government agency can be quite acceptable, as long as you go through the right channels and have enough political support.

What makes this worse than your run-of-the-mill product liability/consumer law type of case is the backdrop of the Toyota dispute (my previous post on Toyota) hanging out there and the sensitivity towards non-reciprocal customer remedies. Ouch, the complaint alleges the same thing with this dispute:

“We have also noticed that HP in the US offered consumers extended warranty periods for even more models and compensated them for transport costs, but in China, it has not made a statement or offered services, and openly discriminated against Chinese consumers,” the complaint said.

Not good at all. How bad it will be for HP depends on a number of factors, including the total number of people involved (so far, rather small), whether there is political support for this action, the reaction of HP, and media interest.

As to the latter, I already noticed one article in Xinhua today (Chinese) about an enterprising young law student from Zhejiang who had laptop problems and went up against HP to get compensation. Poor kid buys a laptop made in Taiwan and, within the two-year warranty period he gets the black screen (黑屏) (of death) after the graphics card overheated. Bummer, no more World of Warcraft.

If the Chinese media is already starting to pen feature articles describing poor unfortunates who have suffered after their HP laptops have given up the ghost, then bad times might be ahead. The next bump in the road is March 15, International Consumer’s Day. Expect AQSIQ to announce some new campaigns at that time to show the higher-ups in the government that they are diligently protecting the interests of the people.

Update: China Daily is on the story too.

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Post tags: class action, consumer law, Hewlett-Packard, product liability, product quality

Bad assumption on my part. Looks like a restructuring for business reasons, the usual pattern whereby a domestic monolith is transformed into a leaner, financially stable entity that can go out and compete internationally as well as dominate at home.

At least I think that’s the idea.

China’s largest publishing house intends to transform itself from a propaganda vehicle into a global player as it spearheads Beijing’s plans to restructure the industry while keeping it under state control.

Nie Zhenning, president of the China Publishing Group, told the Financial Times that he hoped Beijing would regroup the publishing industry into two state-owned conglomerates. After an initial public offering, Mr Nie’s company would then seek to acquire players at the provincial level.

Keeping all this under State control means no meaningful new opportunities for foreign companies. Maybe in the future, if the restructured entities want to do a great deal more business overseas, they will have to make some concessions on the China market. Wouldn’t hold my breath on that in the short term, though.

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Post tags: book publishing, China SOEs, State-owned enterprises

Of even more interest to me is the influence of public opinion on the judicial process, and here I would bring in the entire law enforcement infrastructure, which would include the police (PSB) and prosecutors (PP).

New pressures on the courts originate from the media, from protests, and from petitions, of which almost four million reached the courts in 2005. Activist lawyers, especially when their lawsuits generate unwelcome publicity, add to the pressures.

The Party-state wants the courts to act as safety valves, both to bring grievances to the attention of officials as well as to obtain remedies for the violation of rights. The courts respond to concern for social stability, but as government agencies they also contribute to strengthening the overall capability of the Party-state to expand its abilities to resolve grievances and deal with abuses, all within Party oversight.

So the Party has policy goals, the public has grievances, and the judges are supposed to fix the unpleasantness to ensure a Harmonious Society. This is a tall order. To make matters worse, a lot of the public pressure these days involves areas like criminal law, where you have specific incidents that become infamous via online popularization.

I have talked about several of the better-known cases on this blog in the past. Many of them involve suspected police abuse, protection of local officials who are accused of things like rape, and personal injury cases where compensation has been lacking for one reason or another.

What worries me about this phenomenon is that the Net allows for mob mentality. When “justice” is served, everyone is happy (not that I condone the process). But when the public gets the facts wrong (easy to do when all you have is rumor and speculation), the police and prosecutors can be treated quite badly through no fault of their own. And worst of all, judges feel a great deal of pressure to act towards a specific outcome notwithstanding the merits of that particular case.

Dangerous stuff. I hope to have more time in the future to write about this topic.

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Post tags: china judicial reform, political influence, rule of law, stanley lubman

How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm once they seen Karl Hungus.

–The Dude, The Big Lebowski

The New York Times just published a discussion on unemployment among recent college grads, asking a variety of experts what their take on the subject was and what some of the causes might be.

The basic supply-and-demand problem:

In 1999, the government began a push to expand college education — once considered a golden ticket — to produce more professionals to meet the demands of globalization. This year, more than 6.3 million graduates will enter the job market, up from one million in 1999. But the number of high-skilled, high-paying jobs has not kept pace.

Or maybe it’s a chicken-and-the-egg problem. You push education to develop the economy, but the jobs lag certain other measurements of growth.

First up in the debate was Cindy Fan from UCLA, who downplays the huge numbers of grads (still only 8% of population is college educated) and looks for other explanations:

• Geography. Lots of kids from small cities are flocking to Beijing and Shanghai, putting pressure on those job markets. At the same time, there is a “brain drain” in these small towns.

Kind of reminds me of my situation when I graduated from law school. The economy was bad, sure, but the biggest problem for my fellow graduates and I was that we wanted to stay in Boston, a medium-sized city with too many law schools and not enough jobs.

• Sea turtles (海龟 – hai gui). Chinese students with overseas degrees are returning in record numbers and displacing local grads.

Yes, those folks certainly have a leg up on the local competition. Unfortunately, the market is so bad that many of them have come back to low-paying jobs, if any, earning them the sobriquet kelp (海带 – hai dai).

• Training mismatch. Students these days are more likely to be trained for service sector jobs, but China’s economy is still dominated by industrial firms.

Next up is Huang Yasheng from MIT, who focuses on geography as well. Grads do not want to invest time and money in a college education and then go back to their hometown. (The Karl Hungus problem, see above.)

Professor Huang also sees a skills mismatch, stating what everyone knows about recent grads here: they can’t do much. I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve had over the years who would kill for an experienced Chinese manager who had problem solving skills and who could think creatively. You can’t get that in a college grad (or many older workers, for that matter). I thought this comment by Huang was a particularly nice summary:

Although Chinese universities are not without pockets of excellence, they are churning out people with high expectations and low skills.

Daniel Bell, who teaches at Qinghua, was next. No surprise, he starts off with a quote from Confucius! Bell focuses on the current situation as opposed to the causes, which I think he mostly attributes to a supply-and-demand problem from a boost in education spending.

Bell’s advice is for parents and kids to lower expectations and for China to develop a strong vocational training system. I’ve heard that before, and it certainly is needed. However, if Professor Fan’s 8% figure is correct, it seems like on the whole, China does not have a long-term problem in training this many students.

Next up was Albert Park from Oxford, who is optimistic. He says that given the small percentage of people getting college degrees in China and the trajectory of the economy, everything should work out eventually. Given the short-term pain, however, it sounds as though Professor Park is cautioning grads to modify their expectations.

Last, but not least, was Loren Brandt from the University of Toronto. Professor Brandt points to a mismatch of supply and demand and of skills but is optimistic that economic growth will take care of this problem in the long run, provided that teaching and economic development proceeds forward.

To summarize: too many grads, not enough jobs. Teaching needs to be better, economy needs to grow. Sounds like no short-term solutions and no magic bullet. That does not bode well for recent grads, as the advice given seems limited to “be patient and lower your expectations.”

On the other hand, that’s pretty good advice.

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Post tags: china education, china unemployment, college graduates, economic development

Pandoran Concerned About Protection of Indigenous Innovation

First off, this lawsuit threat is kind of a joke, so if you’re looking for a substantive post on China IPR issues, best to go elsewhere (just for today – please come back another time).

OK, now that all those serious-minded folk are gone, we can have some fun. Just for the record, though, here is the background on this issue:

An amateur Beijing writer alleges Avatar director James Cameron plagiarized his work and said he plans to file a lawsuit, seeking 1 billion yuan in compensation.

“Eighty percent of the plot and the key elements of the story are similar to my 1997 science fiction novel, Tale of the Blue Crows.

Zhou, said he spent more than seven years composing the 1.2-million-word novel, which recounts the epic journey of six astronauts to a distant planet, home to a race of blue skinned beings.

“I wrote in my novel that their space journey took them six years, but in Cameron’s movie, the journey takes them five years, nine months and 22 days,” said Zhou. “I was shocked when I first saw that. It is too close.”

If you’re already LOL, slow down. That was the real stuff. The manufactured laughs are still coming. Obviously that last bit about the length of time of the “space journey” (it can’t be a coincidence!) is a tip off that this guy’s perspective here is slightly skewed.

One last serious point. As a fiction writer and lover of the Sci-fi genre for well over 30 years, I am sympathetic. Every time you write something, it becomes yours in your mind, no matter how derivative it is. And with science fiction, a story about earthlings travelling to another planet to meet up with humanoids is hardly a new idea, even with the genetic manipulation/avatar tech in the movie, which is kind of cool. Not everyone can be an idea man like Dick or Sawyer.

Without further ado, The Daily Mash has a send up of this hapless would-be litigant. I’m just going to cut-and-paste excerpts, it’s hilarious with no comment needed.

Chinese novelist Zhou Shaomou has sensationally claimed that James Cameron’s Avatar has a plot.

Shaomou, whose name means ‘Michael Jackson lyric’ in Mandarin, is suing the director for £97m after stating that Avatar lifted several key story details from his novel Blue People Of The Allegory Mountains.

He said: “My reputation is in tatters now everybody knows I write stuff that could be turned into something like Avatar.

“I’m an absolute joke in the fantasy fiction community, which as you can imagine takes quite some doing.

“I spent seven years writing my 1.2 million word book, only for James Cameron to make a fortune out of it by trimming it to 18 hours, adding loads of brilliant explosions, marketing it really well, having an innate sense of populist tastes and… well… look, that’s not the point.

“Oh, and then there’s the 3D. Have you seen the 3D? Good lord.”

Shaomou claims he first noticed the similarities when the film passed the $1bn mark at the box office, adding: “I suddenly realised there was something very familiar about all that money.”

Entertainment law specialist, Nathan Muir, said: “Shamou doesn’t stand a chance. Any half-decent lawyer will be able to prove that the Avatar storyline is what happens when a maniac rolls around the New Age section of Waterstone’s covered in Blu Tac.”

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Post tags: avatar, copyright infringement, IPR, james cameron, science fiction

One of the big questions hanging out there since the adoption of the Anti-monopoly Law (AML) a couple years ago has been the treatment of State-owned Enterprises (SOEs) and the regulation of the State sector. One of the pillars of competition law is to promote fair competition, and monopolies and monopolistic conduct often runs counter to that principle.

China’s State sector, and its industrial policy in general, presents a competition law problem. How do you square the existence of dominant SOEs, many of which have very large market shares, with fair competition?

The AML provides some basic guidance on this issue. Article 7 acknowledges that although SOEs may engage in monopolistic conduct, they will be protected by the State. In other words, they will receive special protection. At the same time, however, the State recognizes the danger posed by these special privileges and has a duty to regulate SOEs and their pricing behavior.

Articles 8, and 32-37 address specific actions of government actors in restricting competition, laying out certain situations and actions that are prohibited.

Not a lot of detail there, and I have not heard too much on this issue recently. Until Friday, when Grandpa Wen brought up the subject at the meeting of the National People’s Congress.

China will accelerate the reform of monopoly industries to facilitate fair competition among private and state-owned businesses, Premier Wen Jiabao said in a government work report delivered at the parliament’s annual session Friday.

There are calls for government to loosen the grip and invite private sector to join the competition in monopoly industries.

We’ll have to wait and see what all this means once individual policy documents are released. One specific area mentioned was the use of competition to affect pricing of natural resources in the area of energy in the furtherance of environmental goals.

The government said it will deepen the reform of prices for resource products and environmental protection charges as the current state-controlled pricing mechanism does no good for conserving energy and resources, and achieving sustainable development.

Wen noted pushing forward these reforms requires the government to balance the interests of different parties and ensure that the basic living conditions of people with low incomes are not adversely affected.

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Post tags: anti-monopoly law, china state sector, competition law, legal reform, National People's Congress, Wen Jiabao

This year . . . a total of 180,000 convicts spent Lantern Festival, which fell last Sunday, at home rather than in jail, thanks to the community correction program.

China started to trial run the program in 2003 in Beijing and Shanghai, then extended it to 27 provinces.

Having fulfilled their compulsory education and services, offenders on the community correction program can go to work and meet their friends just like ordinary people. (China Daily)

I’ve been asked many times about China’s approach to mediation, community policing, and other alternative programs in the enforcement of law here. Recent reforms suggest a great deal of interest in non-traditional methods, which may be motivated by an attempt to reconcile current conditions with the Harmonious Society.

Community corrections here sounds similar to programs used in the West. You may have seen examples where convicts are allowed to carry out criminal sentences at home. These programs often use security technology (e.g. in the U.S., devices are often affixed to the convict’s ankle that notifies authorities if the convict leaves home) to monitor movement of these people.

These programs are also in line with the new “Tempering Justice With Mercy” campaign, recently outlined by the Supreme People’s Court and which has included reform in the way China uses and carries out the death penalty. I wrote about the new policy last month:

The guidelines say the death penalty should be “resolutely” handed down to those who have committed “extremely serious” crimes, but that the punishment should be reserved for the tiny minority of criminals against which there is valid and ample evidence.

So now it appears that reforms of the criminal justice system are more widespread than simply applying limits to death penalty cases. Community corrections is a way to keep folks out of prisons, maintain their ties with their communities, and give people opportunities to minimize their total sentences.

But wait. Those aren’t the only noteworthy reforms of the criminal justice system. An important one involves the method of State execution:

Another humanitarian move is the increasing use of the lethal injection to replace the traditional method of bullet to the back of the head, which has been in use for decades and was the only lawful execution method until 1996.

(I just love the sheer bluntness of that sentence. Almost as cut and dried as a bullet to the back of the head.)

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Post tags: china criminal law, community corrections, corrections, criminal justice, death penalty, house arrest, legal reform, lethal injection

I find this article mildly annoying:

Is there an “Asian way” to resolving global challenges? The conventional answer is no. But elements of an Asian way are gradually emerging. Given Asia’s growing influence, the world should pay attention – and may have much to gain.

The key to understanding Asian approaches is their pragmatism. Asians constantly adapt and change. (Asia Times)

The fact that it could easily have been me writing the exact same sort of gimmicky article does not minimize my annoyance. Everyone loves a good generalization, or shorthand, or trend, or whatever you want to call it. But you need to have some basis for all this, otherwise it’s what we call . . . an empty generalization.

So let’s take a look here. Saying that Asians adapt and change sounds great. Lots of change in Asia in the past few decades. But “constantly”? I don’t think China was adapting all that much back in the 1700s or 1800s, but I guess that wasn’t within the scope of the article.

Does that statement also mean that non-Asian countries do not adapt? I think that would be a surprise to countries like Ireland, Israel, and Chile, just to name a few.

Moving onward:

In the past, Asians put a premium on protecting their sovereignty and were wary of any multilateral approaches that could dilute it. Now, in response to global challenges – for example pandemics, financial crises and climate change – the vast majority of Asian countries understand that collective action does not erode, but instead protects, sovereignty.

Have Asian countries given up sovereignty in recent years to multilateral organizations? Absolutely, just take a look at ASEAN. But to say that this is a particularly Asian thing is ridiculous. I think it’s safe to say that France and Germany were mildly interested in their sovereignty before good old Monnet and Schuman came along with their nutty idea of European integration, at first in the form of the ECSC. Hardly an Asian way of doing things.

[R]eflecting their pragmatism, the Asians remain ready to accept continuing American leadership and domination of global institutions. Nor do they challenge the US-led security umbrella for the Asia-Pacific region.

OK, that’s called realism. It’s not an Asian type of foreign policy, although it has been practiced successfully by countries like China over the years. Nixon and Kissinger were not Asian but were seen as the masters of realpolitik, not to mention some of Dr. K’s European heroes (e.g. Prince Metternich).

Sure, Asians are willing to cede to American military leadership. It’s cheaper that way, and there is no alternative. The better question is whether Asians will continue that policy stance as their economies (and perhaps militaries) continue to grow. Many analysts already point to a much more aggressive Chinese foreign policy in recent years. That’s pragmatic too, but pragmatism is not synonymous with accepting American leadership.

Asian model? I don’t see it. Perhaps the headline of the article should have been “Asian Nations Pursuing Realist Foreign Policies At Beginning of 21st Century.” I’d go along with that.

For a Friday afternoon, that was way too academic and negative.

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Post tags: asia foreign policy, association of southeast asian nations, china foreign policy, multilateral institutions

Cohen uses the Paterson scandal to show that even someone as powerful as the Governor of New York is subject to the rule of law, and the justice system there is well equipped to handle the matter. In part, this is due to the independent press investigating such scandals, a relatively independent judicial system, and an electoral system that allows for accountability.

All well and good, but this intro language from Cohen is what I most appreciated:

The most formidable challenge to China’s establishment of a credible “rule of law” is neither the quality of its legislation nor the professional competence of its judges, prosecutors, lawyers and police. Laws and the skills of those who apply them have both witnessed substantial progress in the People’s Republic during the past three decades.

The real challenge to the administration of justice in China is, rather, the undue intrusion of politics and, even more broadly, of “guanxi”, the network of interpersonal relations of mutual protection, benefit and dependency that is one of the enduring hallmarks of Chinese society. Courts and judges have much to lose and to fear if they ignore these influences. Such well-known distortions of the legal process as “local protectionism” and corruption are specific manifestations of politics and “guanxi”.

That’s an important distinction. China’s judges and laws have made tremendous progress in recent years, and that should be noted when relevant. The institutions and participants are no joke and should be given respect.

That’s not the problem. The challenge facing the government as it strives for rule of law in this country is political influence over the system. This takes place in every country of course, but it is a particular problem here.

Political influence erodes the rule of law by making outcomes subject to things like guanxi as opposed to the merits of a case. This is one of the many reasons why the Central Government has been cracking down on local corruption and, to a lesser extent, local protectionism. When this sort of thing goes on, litigants lose confidence in the system and the need for extra-legal means of obtaining justice increases.

The biggest unanswered question, though, is whether rule of law is something that can be obtained while still having limited political influence over the judiciary (i.e., rub out local guanxi and protectionism, but maintain ultimate authority in the hands of the CCP).

Jury’s still out on that one.

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Post tags: China Law, guanxi, independent judiciary, jerome cohen, local protectionism, rule of law

It was bad enough when Akio Toyoda, in response to a question about differing quality standards on cars sold in China as opposed to those sold in the U.S. or Japan, used a bizarre and inappropriate analogy to a popular tofu dish. The question really should have been addressed head on, since it seems that many Chinese firmly believe that second (or third) rate vehicles are being foisted upon them.

But the whole PR campaign seems to be getting worse:

Toyota did not offer any form of compensation for the RAV4 models recently involved in the recall in China over gas pedal problems, the Changjiang Daily reported Wednesday.

Consumers in Wuhan questioned the company’s different attitudes toward the issue of recall. In the US, the company provides door-to-door service to consumers involved in the recall. When drivers take their recalled vehicles to the factory themselves, the company offers transportation reimbursements and a loaner car of the same model.

Sun, a Toyota RAV4 user who had just had his car fixed, said although he did not pay for the repairs, it had cost him time and gas so Toyota should be responsible for his loss.

At some car forums on the Internet, many RAV4 owners are discussing the possibility of filing a class action suit in China against Toyota, the report said. (China Daily)

This whole thing is starting to remind me of other foreign-related product liability “scandals” we’ve seen here in the past, and that’s not a good thing for Toyota. The one that immediately comes to mind is the Toshiba laptop kerfuffle back in 2000.
(More)

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Post tags: japan china relations, product liability, product recall, tort law, toyota

At Tuesday’s Senate hearing on Internet censorship, someone in the press asked Google VP and Deputy General Counsel Nicole Wong about an action against the Chinese government at the World Trade Organization.

Well, the press (again) has taken the bait and is talking about the possibility. The Financial Times kicks their coverage off with this tagline:

If Google chooses to take its case to the WTO, the battle could be both bloody-minded and counterproductive.

Sounds dramatic. I like the blood part.

So, should Google take China to the WTO? Great idea, if the WTO allowed non-Member States entities other than Member States to initiate proceedings. IT DOESN’T!!!
(More)

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Post tags: China, financial times, Google, internet censorship, national treatment, world trade organization

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Post tags: China model, china/divide, executive pay

Latest news goes against conventional wisdom:

The computer attack which led Google to threaten leaving China and created a firestorm between Washington and Beijing appears to have been deployed by amateurs, according to an analysis by a U.S. technology firm.

“I would say this particular botnet group was not well funded, in which case I would not conclude they were state sponsored, because the level of the tools used would have been far superior to what it was,” said Gunter Ollmann, vice president of research at Damballa, an Atlanta-based company that provides computer network security. (CNN)

Hmm. What does that say about all those stories of high-level military involvement, hacking academies, scary espionage initiatives? Well, it has the potential to tarnish them a bit, or at least make all that hyperbolic language look stupid in retrospect.

The level of sophistication certainly does not come across as high end:

The botnet used in the attack began being tested in July, nearly six months before the attack, according to Damballa analysis.

He added, “Some of the codes within the malware were at least five years old” — ancient, by software development standards. The attackers used technology “that had been abandoned by professional botnet operators years ago,” he said.

On the other hand, as some of the comments to the CNN article reflect, them Chinese sure are sneaky, and this new information tells us nothing:

. . . and do you think we believe it? This looks like a paid news item from China to hide its military’s hacking activities. Since when amateur Chinese started to hack so sophisticatedly [sic]?

and

the best hackers are not state controlled silly.

I’m surprised that no one suggested the unsophisticated nature of the attacks was actually proof of a highly sophisticated misdirection campaign by the PLA.

First you use outside contractors, then you give them shitty software, and finally you make sure that they use servers that can’t be traced to the government. It’s brilliant!

I guess we’ll all just continue to believe what we want to believe.

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Post tags: china foreign investment, computer hacking, Gmail, Google, internet censorship

Silly political theater, but worth a mention. Details from Asia Times:

The United States-China Congressional Committee focused last week on a nagging question that refuses to go away: does it matter if China is America’s bank? Or, said differently, what are the implications for American geopolitics given China’s enormous holdings of US Treasurys?

These things usually focus on what China might do to the U.S. if the two countries have serious conflicts in the future. At the outset, therefore, I’m already pissed off because the debate has been framed by the “inevitable conflict” crowd.

The threshhold question should be: does it matter if the U.S. debt is this high?

The next question: does it matter if U.S. debt is held by foreigners? What percentage is acceptable?

Only then, says I, should they turn to this: Does it matter whether China, as opposed to say Japan, is the top foreign holder of U.S. government debt?

The congressional committee hearings last week drew on a variety of experts, the majority of whom agreed with the broad consensus that a “balance of financial terror” – the phrase of Larry Summers, director of the White House’s National Economic Council – remains the appropriate way to describe the current US-China economic relationship.

What the f&@$ does that even mean? Seriously. I don’t think the use of the word “terror” in post-9/11 D.C. is very responsible. Thanks, Larry.

If someone could explain exactly what China could do, and might do, that would hurt the U.S., I would be more forgiving. But the only thing these folks talk about is some horror story of China selling off massive quantities of T-bills, driving up U.S. interest rates.

Sounds scary, but China is locked into a death grip (I like that better than ‘financial terror’) with the U.S. Any drop in the value of the dollar will be very costly to Beijing, and it seems to me that they will seek to avoid that possibility.

Washington should probably be more worried about what might happen to U.S. interest rates if at some point in the future, China rebalances its economy to such an extent that it stops running huge trade surpluses with America. Won’t be anytime soon, but then again, I don’t see the U.S. fiscal deficits disappearing anytime in the short run either.

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Post tags:

I’m not sure this was such a good analogy for Akio Toyoda to use while on his apology tour to Beijing:

CCTV reporter Rui Chenggang asked him during the one-on-one, “There is a saying the best cars made by Japanese companies are sold in Japan, the second-rate ones are sold to the U.S. and Europe, and the cars that are in an even lower tier are exported to China. Of course this saying may be unfounded, but can you guarantee that Chinese consumers will receive completely the same service during the recall process?”

Reiterating the response he gave during the briefing, Toyoda tried a gustatory appeal with a reference to a well-known spicy bean curd dish.

“Mapo tofu in China, Japan and the U.S. is still called mapo tofu, though the taste is somewhat different,” he said. “To compare cars to food is probably not the best example, but we hope everyone can understand that when we make cars, we factor in regional differences in road conditions, consumer habits and usage criteria.” (WSJ)

Note to Toyoda: the next time someone asks you this question, you first say that it isn’t true. Second, you reiterate that all Toyotas are built to the same high quality standards. Third, at a time when consumers are worried about your cars going out of control and crashing, you should not use an example that compares said cars to limp bean curds with the consistency of weak Jell-O.

Now I’m hungry, and the leftover mapo doufu in my frig is calling to me.

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Post tags: product liability, product recall, tofu, toyota