Whistling Dixie Over China

By Keith R. Schmitz

Want something to really worry about?

China is starting to invest in its people. Meanwhile, this country is seeking ways to whittle at our education system and is engaged in contentious battles with its educators.

Case in point why we should be concerned. About five years ago in Beijing, stopped in at one of their popular Border's style bookstores on Wangfujing Street on the way to the Forbidden City.

On the first floor, where the Harry Potter and the latest right wing rant and rave books should be there were books on math and science, and even customer service books broken down by industry. They had a full free standing bookshelf on differential calculus.

Second floor was devoted to books and other media on how to speak and read English. By the time you reach the third floor there were the popular titles. Not a formula for retailing success here, but when you look at the big picture, not pretty.

This is not a lesson necessarily though on selling, but on selling us out.

Darts, Laurels, and the Past Week

by bert

Laurel: or gravestone rose, to the late Senator Paul Wellstone of Northfield, Minnesota. As many will remember too well, it was six years ago yesterday that he, his wife Sheila, and daughter Marcia died in a plane crash. I was living in Minneapolis at the time, and remember hearing the news while driving to errands on a crappy, cold Friday.

I was first amazed by Professor Wellstone when the short man gave a barn-burner speech like I had never heard before at a primary campaign rally for Sen. Bill Bradley in the 1990s. While in Minneapolis, I also saw him once having a ball with Marcia when we were all part of a group cheering on the runners of the Twin Cities Marathon.

Call me naive, and I concede that the timing was curious, but I have not bought into the conspiracy theories on Wellstone's death. The right would prefer his lasting legacy be the memorial service they say was inappropriately political. I would prefer that his legacy be his prescient warnings about the war with Iraq that the Bush White House wanted in the worst way.

Dart: To Charlie Sykes for hypocrisy. Look, I don't relish the work of pointing up talk radio hypocrisy. There's so much of it it's like shooting fish in a barrel. It's drudgery on the scale of Beetle Bailey peeling potatoes for KP duty. But it needs to be done, if for nothing else than to show I'm not as dumb as I look.

Last week Charlie chastised the media for dwelling on Sarah Palin's wardrobe budget, because there are more substantive issues don't you know? But I recall that about four years earlier on Charlie's show he devoted at least an hour on the multiple thousands of dollars that John Kerry spent on a bicycle.

Laurel: To Hu Jia, a human rights activist (sort of like a community organizer) now serving a three-and-a-half-year sentence for talking to reporters about China's repression of dissidents. Although not as prestigious, this Folkbum laurel goes along with the Sakhorov Prize for Freedom of Thought bestowed this week on Hu by the European Parliament. The Chinese government brazenly warns the organizations such as the European Parliament or the Nobel Committee to not mention or honor Hu, or else. Now Beijing's got the Folkbum folks to worry about too.

Retail Counter Intuitive

By Keith R. Schmitz

American Apparel is taking their grunge appeal clothing line to China.

What's the big deal?

Wal-Mart and other retailers for years now have been selling us cheap Chinese goods. Though they are promising us low prices it is a circular scam with millions of American losing high paying jobs to China and elsewhere having to shop at places like Wal-Mart because our working folks are making minimum wage if they are lucky to get a job.

American Apparel is swimming against the tide, importing their made in LA clothing to the Chinese.

Company CEO Dov Charney said the company would pay sales clerks in the Chinese stores hourly wages exceeding the U.S. minimum of $5.85, which in some parts of China is more than a worker makes in a day.

Here's the interesting part. AA will be paying their Chinese clerks above minimum US wages. Bear in mind what the average Chinese gets paid. My wife and I visited a hutung in Beijing and met a couple who were making $100 a month. Their college educated daughter who works in IT gets $300 a month.

We hired a driver for the full day who had a late model Audi and charged us $45 a day.

American Apparel was looking to open in time for the Olympics, but dealing with the 13 layers of bureaucracy has put a crimp in their plans.

The expansion into China, first reported by trade publications Women's Wear Daily and DNR, could lead to the opening of five stores there by year's end, Charney said. The first three shops will open this spring, he said.

"Once we see the momentum in one store -- it's going to be fluid -- we'll open another," he said. "We think, over time, there's going to be a class of metropolitan adults who will appreciate exactly what we do."