I just found out why Volkswagen is the most popular car here. After the Cold War, in 1982 or so, VW was the first joint venture between a Western European company and Chinese investors. The original plane is still operational and profiting every year.
I had a good discussioni with my wife's cousin Patrick, an English-speaking 28-year-old who lives in Beijing. He is in charge of the European market at a huge automobile distributor. We also talked about Ford. I saw 1 Ford car since I've come to Harbin. He said it must be a one-off. There is nowhere you can buy Ford in Harbin. Either somebody drove it here from another country, like Russia, or they bought it used, or even had it shipped here. I told Patrick how our auto industry in Canada relies heavily on the US market. In China, they are much more self-reliant, but that can be a good thing or a bad thing.
I think China is like that one sheltered kid everyone grew up with. He only hangs around with his parents, or people his mom invites over for play dates. There is very little external pressure in China. Sure, they have the big North American brands here, trying to penetrate the market. Nike, Kappa, and Playboy, but the people here don't know what that brand stands for - they just know that the tv tells them they want it. Playboy for example, is just a clothing brand over here. Nobody really knows what Playboy stands for because pornography and magazines that show topless girls are banned here. But it's so popular in North America that Chinese people want to try to emulate the Americans. That's one thing that bugs me about China. The brand of jeans you wear or the car you drive is more important than what's in your head.
On the other side of the coin, every Chinese person knows who Yao Ming is. He IS basketball here. Before Yao made it to the NBA, I bet maybe 1/20th of the country knew what the NBA was. Now that there is a Chinese person playing (well 2 acyually, Yi plays for Milwaukee now), you see NBA t-shirts everywhere on little kids. That's great for the league, and sure for Chinese national pride, but most people don't know that the league was around for decades before Yao Ming. The other night I was excited because they were showing an NBA game - sports are at least something I can watch without having to listen to the dialogue - But they edited the game and only showed the parts when Yao Ming touched the ball! What a crock of shit! An entire game took 20 minutes to watch because Yao was the only thing they cared about!
So, I kind of got off topic there, but basically, having a foreign car, jeans or anything here in China means you have some sort of status above everyboy else. VW saw that opportunity and struck up a joint venture with a local investor. Now they are coining it, and I'm watching 1/5 of an NBA game, just because Yao ming is on the court. Oh well, I'll just hop in a VW Jetta taxi and go home.
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