Fascinating Boston Globe article comparing current-day China to the US 100 years ago by University of Georgia history professor Stephen Mihm, author of the upcoming A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States, published by Harvard University Press. The Harvard University Press has a podcast interview with Mihm on their website that is worth listening to.
China may be a very different country, but in many ways it is a younger version of us. The sooner we understand this, the sooner we can realize that China's fast and loose brand of commerce is not an expression of national character, much less a conspiracy to poison us and our pets, but a phase in the country's development. Call it adolescent capitalism, if you will: bursting with energy, exuberant, dynamic. Like any teenager, China's behavior is also maddening, irresponsible, and dangerous. But it is a phase, and understanding it that way gives us some much-needed perspective, as well as some tools for handling the problem. Indeed, if we want to understand how to deal with China, we could do worse than look to our own history as a guide.
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In one industry after another, 19th-century American producers churned out counterfeit products in remarkable quantities, slapping fake labels on locally made knockoffs of foreign ales, wines, gloves, and thread. As one expose at the time put it: "We have 'Paris hats' made in New York, 'London Gin' and 'London Porter' that never was in a ship's hold, 'Superfine French paper' made in Massachusetts."
A nation of outlaws: A century ago, that wasn't China -- it was us [Boston Globe]
Mihm also wrote about North Korean counterfeiting of US currency [New York Times] in the New York Times in 2006.
That's interesting. And of course, Japan was a country full of counterfeiters until fairly recently as well. Intellectual property is important, but many people seem to forget their own history when criticizing others.