Building A Better Wall

In Sunday's New York Times article titled, “China Moves to Change Damaged Global Image,” Times reporter David Barboza wrote at length about the challenges facing China and the steps the behemoth nation is taking to remedy the situation. New “controls” enacted by Beijing, a PR effort spearheaded by global experts at Ogilvy, greater openness and the willingness to work with everyone from the FBI to the World Health Organization are cited as just some of the steps being taken to fix the problem.

What struck me about this article, however, is that there’s no mention of actually FIXING the problems. It’s all about containment of the problem through regulation and inspection. It’s about beefing up the laws and their enforcement. However, none of that really addresses the root cause of the problem (you knew I’d have to work in, “root cause,” right?). While it’s true that there are and will always be parts of the economy, even big parts, that have no desire to play by the rules, we can’t assume enforcement is the ultimate solution. Doing so turns a blind eye to perhaps the bigger—and longer-term problem – poor quality.

China is experiencing something akin to that of Japan in the 1950s. Eager to play on the world stage following World War II, Japan suffered from poor quality manufacturing and an even poorer reputation. And while it’s true that the lawless nature of Japan wasn’t quite as severe as that of China, it’s also true that Japan turned to people such as Drs. W. Edwards Deming, Genichi Taguchi and Joseph Juran for help.

The Japanese realized that prior to the war they weren’t in the business of educating business managers like we do in the U.S., and that they didn’t have the technical skills and experience that was already embedded in the U.S. economy. Similarly, since it began its move toward more capitalist systems some 20 years ago, it’s only in the past 10 years that China has begun its emergence onto the world stage at such a phenomenal rate. It takes time to educate and even more time to master the skills necessary to deliver on a promise of high quality.

The Chinese Government would do well to focus every bit as much energy on actually improving the quality of Chinese products as it is spending on controlling poor quality.

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[John Hunter]

Information on Deming's management ideas.