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Beijing’s Economic Warfare
THOMAS MCARDLE was a White House speechwriter for President George W. Bush and writes for IssuesInsights.com. Thomas McArdle
Stopping the Looters—Here and in China
Big brick-and-mortar retailers including Best Buy, Home Depot, and Target are backing a curious strategy against the organized smash-and-grab looting going on during the Christmas shopping season in cities such as San Francisco and Chicago that are run by Democratic mayors and district attorneys who won’t prosecute robbers.
They’re calling for the passage of bipartisan legislation that promises to “expose criminals who are selling consumers stolen, fake and dangerous products.”
“The Integrity, Notification, and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces for Consumers (INFORM Consumers) Act,” sponsored by the Democratic chairwoman and her ranking Republican colleague on the consumer protection and commerce subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The idea is that if you know goods are stolen or counterfeit, you won’t buy them.
Can federal regulations really dry up the demand for stolen goods when people see the massive discounts, and are inclined not to ask questions? Last year, the editor-in-chief of tech news website Lifewire.com, Lance Ulanoff, pointed out that stolen goods being sold online already aren’t that difficult to identify—prices that are too good to be true, inaccuracies and misspellings in descriptions, amateurish graphics, and sellers’ anonymity being obvious clues.
Moreover, the resale sites themselves profit, and therefore, have an interest in turning a blind eye to the goods’ origins.
So it’s peculiar to hear Brian Dodge, president of the Retail Industry Leaders Association, earlier this month tell Fox News that the INFORM Consumers Act is “the solution that exists.” When asked by Fox’s Neil Cavuto if the “federal solution” that he’s “committed to” includes “more police” and “funding for more guards,” Dodge claimed that “the solution here is not necessarily focused on the police side,” although he conceded that “there’s obviously work to be done there.” But for big retailers, Dodge says “the solution is to take away the easy access that criminals have to unsuspecting buyers.”
Dodge said that “there used to be a time where criminals or thieves would steal products and the only way they could sell them was in a dark alley,” while today, they do it online. Not surprisingly, he made a point of naming the personification of “online,” the archrival of his organization’s members: Amazon.
Still, let’s not let Amazon off the hook. The online giant may now back the INFORM Act (with future changes “to further strengthen the bill”), but in June, Amazon used its clout to kill INFORM as part of a bipartisan proposal aimed to rein in China economically and militarily.
Which brings us to the world’s biggest looter, and most notorious criminal reseller of products belonging to others. The regime in Beijing encourages and facilitates the theft of U.S. intellectual property, that property’s replication, and the displacement of the legitimate American sellers in the Chinese domestic market, then finally their displacement in the global market. China’s People’s Liberation Army and its Ministry of State Security are also heavily involved.
The widespread propagation of the evidence that this is happening simply won’t stop Western consumer demand for cheap Chinese products. Americans and Europeans are already inundated with the horror stories of slave labor, human rights violations such as the bloody persecution of the Uyghurs, and the Chinese regime’s objectives in overtaking the United States as the world’s preeminent superpower.
While technology, of course, is the most serious economic sector in mainland Chinese theft, consider a more mundane example. Amazon offers the impressive Sonnet model fountain pen in “Red Lacquer with Gold Trim” by the longstanding pen manufacturer Parker for a price well over $100. Go to eBay, however, and the same product is apparently available for under $9. Then, a near-to-identical version from mainland China with another brand name can be purchased on Amazon for under $6. In this case, the product description celebrates the pen being “inspired from the long history and splendid traditional culture of China, which contributes to the fine artistic elements and design concept.” No hiding the product’s origins is necessary.
There are YouTube videos by fountain pen aficionados comparing the real Parker, the counterfeit, and the copycat with a different brand name, coming to the conclusion that the quality is not all that far apart on the three offerings. So, when a consumer has the opportunity to save more than $100 for a status symbol that has a good chance of fooling those he seeks to impress, how often will ethical qualms get in the way?
It’s clear that only holding thieves in U.S. cities responsible for their thievery by applying the law will deter them. In the same vein, stopping Beijing’s economic warfare against the free world requires approving laws that go beyond tariffs, keeping their products out, and ending Americans’ dependency on them.
Instead of blaming consumers for being seduced by low prices, retailers must support real measures against Beijing’s criminality—before it is too late, as we watch communist China’s global rise.
