On quality and blacklists - the WTO column

(This weekend in Chinabiz)

Shanghai – Is it bad when you have to wait for an hour to get your food in the newly opened Mexican restaurant Zapata’s at Hengshan Road in Shanghai? Pretty bad when you rolled in with in empty stomach and where unable to locate a waiter or a menu, cannot talk to people because the music is too loud and has nothing to do with Mexico.

The quality of services in China has years improved greatly over the past ten years from non-existing to fairly decent, but in the past year a reversed trend is noticeable. Competitions is no longer the driving force for companies in China to improve the level of their performance, now everybody is rushing into this booming market and when they cannot got you, they will get a customers that is stupid enough to accept the lack of quality.

“How can I get on your wireless connection?” I asked a senior-looking staff member of the 5-star Pudong Shangri-la last week during an international banking conference with hundreds op bankers. He had no clue. For two reasons, I discovered after he fetched somebody from another floor who could speak some basic English. Hardly anybody in the hotel spoke English and the hotel had no wireless internet access. In the end he could offer me a phone line, but only after I had blackmailed one of the organizers to pay for the local dialup costs, otherwise they would not connect me.

Have you tried a head-hunter recently? Don’t.

Last weekend I met a manager of a larger manufacturing operation in Guangdong. He was thinking of moving a part of his operation from Guangdong to Malaysia. The rising wages and possible political problems with both the EU and the US influenced his decisions, but the major reason was the lack of quality of his suppliers. “When you not take their stuff, they can sell it too so man others,” he said. “Chinese companies have no incentive anymore to improve their quality.”

You see what awful thoughts come up, while waiting for an hour with an empty stomach for an enchiladas. China is developing a major problem with the quality of its operations. Growing too fast has some very severe side-effects.
Are the local media (state-owned of foreign funded) going after this problem? I do not think so: those chicken heads hold the interest of advertisers in higher esteem than those of their readers and rather prefer to produce top-10 lists with the best performers. I’m thinking of setting up some blacklists: please let me know who should be on it and why.

Fons Tuinstra