Cardsharp

cardsharp The China

syndrome

Try telling people that lived through two World Wars, that the globe today has never been in a more dire situation. In fact, despite the war in Ukraine, in the first 22 years of the 21st century, fewer people have died in human conflict than in any other two decades in the last two millennia. And aparently there are fewer people living in poverty, than at any time in world history.

To Cardsharp, what makes the present day unique is the influence of modern technology, the internet, social media and millions of online platforms. It makes us feel that the world is in the midst of constant crisis. Which it is, but then it always has been.

Thanks to the multifarious media platforms, to Cardsharp’s mind it seems that every issue is elevated to a crisis and there is a moral outrage angle that someone wants to exploit. The world is experiencing some terrible stuff - the war in Ukraine, rampant inflation and global warming, for starters - but why then pick on the humble Christmas card?!

Our industry has had enough to deal with in the last vital quarter. The cost-ofliving crisis and how that will affect Christmas card sales, the strength of the dollar affecting manufacturing costs and the endless run of postal strikes hitting us throughout December. We normally get very unfairly battered in the media about charity Christmas cards and the percentage that reaches the good causes, but thankfully this Christmas past, we were spared that particular media outrage.

We even had the self-appointed ‘Money Saving Expert’ Martin Lewis, who has made a fortune giving such sage advice on topics such as ‘How much does it cost to keep your Christmas lights on?’, advising people to save money by not sending Christmas cards.

But in late November, we were hit with a real left fielder that no one could have predicted. It came from an unlikely source - the esteemed Daily Telegraph of all places and its senior news reporter, Patrick Sawer.

The headline was bad enough: ‘High Street shops accused of hypocrisy as almost half of Christmas cards are made in China’. The article went on to accuse high street shops of a lack of sensitivity as well as hypocrisy for outsourcing to China, where Christians are routinely persecuted.

The Telegraph ‘found’ that nearly half of the Christmas cards sold by major high street retailers and supermarkets are printed in China. Wow, that took some investigative journalism thought Cardsharp! This, according to the Telegraph, is prompting concern over messages of hope and peace being produced in a country with a poor human rights record.

It singled out the likes of Paperchase with 51 of its 57 multipacks made in China and WHSmith, with all ten of its multipacks from there and shock horror, including one that showed a festive London skyline.

Above: The only thing that hasn’t happened is an alien invasion that threatens the future of humanity, as featured in the War of the Worlds film based on HG Wells’ book. Left: The Telegraph unfairly chose to pick on boxed Christmas cards that have been made in China. Below left: Martin Lewis has not helped the industry in suggesting that people save money by not sending Christmas cards.

The Telegraph even got a quote from Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative Party Leader. Remember him? not many people do! “For a country that is locking up peaceful democracy campaigners and cracking down on Christian churches, it beggars belief that British companies could be so insensitive at a time of peace and good will, when China right now is guilty of slave labour and genocide and threatens Taiwan with invasion.”

The article also included a quote from the Bishop of St Albans who stated: “We should all ask ourselves where our products come from”.

Now, Cardsharp is not condoning the brutal behaviour of the Chinese government, particularly with regard to its treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang province or the clamp down on civil liberties in Hong Kong. But how does the greeting card industry approach this thorny issue?

Rishi Sunak has advocated a new attitude towards China, which he describes as “robust pragmatism”. Perhaps, as well, this is really the best policy we can adopt as an industry.

The Telegraph did include quotes from all the major retailers that stood accused. All maintained that their suppliers were robustly audited, and the workers were treated fairly. They all also said that they did not source from Xinjiang province. Iain Duncan Smith clearly demonstrated why he never became Prime Minister, or ever even got to fight an election, when he stated, “Loads of printers go out of business here, meanwhile China uses slave labour. I am

appalled by the lack of sensitivity of these organisations”. He totally misses the point. The

UK greeting card industry does not have the print capacity in the UK to print all of the Christmas boxes or if it did, it could not do it at a price that could be passed onto the UK population. Many publishers and retailers are indeed making real efforts to re-shore as much production as possible, but you can’t change supply chains overnight. Several publishers and retailers are looking for alternative locations to China for production, but they are not without challenges, not just in time and expertise.

If we don’t manufacture Christmas card boxes in China what are the other options, mused Cardsharp? What about Turkey, that lovely bastion of free speech and pacifism? Or India, that hugely tolerant Muslim-loving country! Ditto Bangladesh, a corrupt one-party state kept in power by the military.

But Cardsharp thinks he has found the answer. A huge country, where the Christian church is all powerful and half the population attends its services, where Christian patriarchs have the ear of the president, and where Christmas is celebrated as a Christian festival. So how about outsourcing our entire overseas Christmas card manufacture to Russia?

Cardsharp is not serious of course. But there is an awful lot of Christmas humbug when it comes to manufacturing origin. Take a look at the digital device that no doubt, Duncan Smith, the very reverend bishop and many PG readers use every few minutes - the iPhone. Well Cardsharp learned that 95% of iPhones are manufactured in China and 19% of them are sold there. And Apple regularly removes apps that the Chinese government deems inappropriate. In another words, Apple tacitly agrees to censorship by the Chinese state. The oppressed Uighurs in Xingang province are denied any kind of voice about their plight by Apple’s tacit collaboration with China.

While we are on the subject, reflects Cardsharp, let’s take a look at the issue of the environment. Next time you hear someone rattling on about not sending greeting cards to protect the future of the earth, here are a few facts. Laptops, smart phones and digital technology contributed 3.5% of global emissions in 2020 and this is predicted to rise to 14% by 2040. To put this in perspective, this is half the contribution of the whole worldwide transportation system every train, plane and automobile journey on the planet.

In fact, virtually every toy, Christmas decoration and a massive proportion of gifts that are bought at Christmas are manufactured in China. So, in singling out our greeting card industry in the Telegraph article to Cardsharp’s mind smacked of fake outrage and shoddy journalism. The Telegraph has often been called the official newspaper of the entrepreneur and the Conservative party, but there was nothing very entrepreneurial about the tack taken in this case.

So, having had to contend with fighting numerous battles in the last quarter of 2022, Cardsharp hopes that the new year will herald new opportunities and an easier ride. Or, to refer to one of the hits by New Wave band, China Crisis, could that just be ‘Wishful Thinking’?!

Top: The Tech Vision platform recently made a video about Apple’s iPhone manufacturing in China. Right: China Crisis first sang all about Wishful Thinking back in the 80s. Left: While there has been a fair amount of re-shoring manufacturing to UK soil, China is still flying the flag for overseas production.