Americans and Europeans are in complete self-denial about the morass that their societies and economies have gotten themselves into.
Apart from the colossal looting and greed which broke the backs of Wall Street and Canary Wharf, bringing down with it what used to be brand-investment and retail banking institutions such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Royal Bank of Scotland and a slew of "big name" institutions which used to cluster around the orbit of big-name Western multinational banks..... there is one industry which marks and defines how the WEST has gone wrong, and where CHINA has gotten it right.
It is the auto industry.
Consider General Motors, and what used to be the invincible crucible of high and mightly hard-core industry that American industrialists used to boast about and smugly promote.
Who has not heard of the axiom which states:
"What's good for GM is good for the rest of America."
Fast forward to 2009, and news about GM teetering on the brink of insolvency and looming bankruptcy is increasingly becoming more ominous.
What went wrong ? Apart from legacy costs, health care costs, and an overburdened cost structure and bad management, American cars and brands like GM, Chrysler, and Ford have now gotten a bad name stuck to the cars they build... the onus extends to shoddyness, lack of quality control, and worse, lousy service and awfully bad designs and awfully bad fuel-efficiency.
It is not just the actuality but the imagery associated with the American car which has been disastrous for Detroit. Once the bad reputation stuck, it is difficult to re-shape public perception about its malodorous reputation.
Myself, I drive a GM Chevy Malibu and have driven it for five (5) years. I must confess that I have no major problems with the integrity of the engine or the body of steel that a Chevy, known for the working man's car, is well known for.
One thing though.... the fuel mileage efficiency sucks. The Malibu six-cylinder LS I drive is a gas-guzzler.
And worse, the GM dealership which services GM Chevy cars in my neighborhood sucks. The service department gouges customers and charges an "arm and a leg" for minor service maintenance and repairs... thus forcing me to have my car maintained and serviced by private Asian immigrant mechanics in private shops which charge a fraction it might have caused under highly-labor unionized shops in GM's constellation of dealerships and their service departments.
The writing is on the wall for GM. The encrusted, inflexible and "in denial" United Auto Workers' Union have got to realize that the American auto worker today is overpaid, underworked, and can't compete anymore compared to their counterparts elsewhere around the world.
Consider the two news links today in the online sources about GM and China's nascent auto industry, heading in the direction of fuel-efficient electric-powered small cars.
China, its appears, is jumping onto the business of Lithium-eon technology and rapidly "leap-frogging" the competition, including the established European and American automakers, in pro-typing the "electric war."
This is great for China and the Chinese people.
I have always maintained that the gasoline-powered automobile is a disaster for China, given the size of its population, and the prospect of air pollution caused by the fossil-fueld powered automobile, as designed by foreign car-makers.
Consider Green technology, and adapt alternative fuel to China's nascent transit and automotive industries.
It is a winner for China.
And what a contrast between GM, America's dying auto behemoth, with China's emerging start-ups and auto companies, such as one called BYD, i.e. for "Bring Your Dream."
BYD, it appears, has made a major leap in electric-powered small cars, with a range which is ideal for China's cities.
Click on the two links below and find out the differences between the US and China. One is a bad news story; the other is a good news story.
One... the story about GM:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123997956844329343
.html#mod=testMod
The other, the story about BYD Co., China's upstart electric car manufacturer:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jS6KukQO-Ula0R4r4CGVYJforgrwD97K41QO0
