Posted by Denny Hatch
HUAWEI: Sick Ad. Sick Company. Sick China. [Sic!]
On 2 February 2015, the ad above showed up on the right side of my Yahoo inbox. I instantly hated Huawei for
subjecting me to it.
Like grand opera, ballet is a
fragile and hugely expensive undertaking that means a great deal to balletomanes and casual fans as well as those who perform ballet,
compose for it and aspire to be part of it.
The pack rat in me
dictated this ad was worth saving for some future post.
Who and what is Huawei? I
wondered.
What the hell are they
saying?
What’s the point?
I was stunned. Grossed out.
About Women't feet
Recently I had breakfast
with Randy Swartz, Founder and Director of Dance
Celebration at Philadelphia’s Annenberg Center. I described the ad and
asked if the feet of all ballet dancers look like this.
“Yes.”
“This means when they are en
pointe they are in severe pain.”
“Yes.”
This triggered a long
conversation about the physiology of the human foot. Randy pointed out that
when a dancer en pointe lands from a leap, her toes absorb four times her body weight.
For a dancer with a second toe longer than her big toe (as in the above ad) the
pain is particularly excruciating. “Ballet dancers are always in pain,” said
Randy.
Quite frankly, I’m not sure I can ever
watch ballet
again with the knowledge that true business of these performers is the
management of agonizing pain papered over with fake smiles pasted on their
faces.
I emailed a draft of this blog to Randy. His comment:
I have seen those feet up close and in person. Not all dancers suffer to that extent. There have been “advances” in helping dancers deal with it. If not the feet then it’s the back, legs, hips, etc. They are always hurting and getting treatment. They expect it. Injury ends or shortens their careers. They are in the army of art and every time they go on stage, they are going to war. There are always casualties just like Sunday afternoon. It is three times body weight and speaking of body weight and body shamming dance is where that is at. Add racism and sexual harassment on a monumental level and that pretty much describes the dance world. Everything is beautiful at the ballet.
I emailed a draft of this blog to Randy. His comment:
I have seen those feet up close and in person. Not all dancers suffer to that extent. There have been “advances” in helping dancers deal with it. If not the feet then it’s the back, legs, hips, etc. They are always hurting and getting treatment. They expect it. Injury ends or shortens their careers. They are in the army of art and every time they go on stage, they are going to war. There are always casualties just like Sunday afternoon. It is three times body weight and speaking of body weight and body shamming dance is where that is at. Add racism and sexual harassment on a monumental level and that pretty much describes the dance world. Everything is beautiful at the ballet.
The Huawei Ad Is a Reminder of China’s Morbid
Obsession with the Mutilation of Women’s Feet
Tiny Deformed Feet—Centuries Old
Viagra of Chinese Folk Medicine
Foot binding, the
cruel practice of mutilating the feet of young girls, was once pervasive in
turn-of-the-century China, where it was seen as a sign of wealth and marriage
eligibility. For a millennium—from the 10th to 20th centuries—the
practice flourished on and off, deeply ingrained in Chinese society. Even after
it was outlawed in 1912, many women continued to clandestinely bind their
daughters’ feet, believing it would make them more attractive to a suitor.—Nina Strochlic, Daily Beast
How Sick Is
Huawei?
What Triggered This Post
As Washington-Beijing relations teeter, Chinese tech titan
Huawei's chief financial officer has been arrested in Canada and faces
extradition to the U.S. But Meng Wanzhou, aka Sabrina Meng, isn’t your
garden-variety executive; she’s the company founder’s daughter.
—Rachel Louise Ensign,
The
Wall Street Journal
My thought processes:
• Huawei… Huawei? Aren't these the dudes who sent me the weird ad?
• Violating Iran Sanctions?
What are they talking about?
Sanctions?
My understanding of
“sanctions” is what Obama slapped on Russia for meddling in the U.S. elections.
Those sanctions froze vast amounts of Russian funds belonging to Putin and top
oligarchs held in financial institutions here and across the world.
Obama’s sanctions, as I
understand them, were not about physical items, but rather electronic walls
that imprisoned money and access to it.
One result was Trump’s NSA
chief General Mike Flynn getting in Dutch by immediately phoning Russian Ambassador
Sergey Kislyak and promising that Donald Trump would rescind Obama’s order
just as soon as soon as he was sworn in as president.
Armchair generals know
enough not to make big decisions on their own. Flynn was obviously in cahoots with
the President-elect.
In effect, for the first
time in history the United States had two competing presidents determining
foreign policy.
About
Huawei
• Headquartered in Shenzhen, China, Huawei (pronounced Hwah-Way).
• Note: Just across the border from Hong Kong, Shenzhen is the
epicenter of the Theft of Intellectual Property, counterfeiting and the 4-Cs
(China’s Copy Cat Culture).
• Huawei has 180,000 employees and is privately held.
• Huawei’s business: Telecommunications Equipment, Networking
Equipment and Consumer Electronics (e.g. smartphones lots cheaper than
Apple’s).
• While market penetration in the U.S. is a paltry 2%, Huawei
dominates Europe (32%) and Asia (38%).
• “Huawei
is effectively an arm of the Chinese government and it's more than capable of
stealing information from U.S. officials by hacking its devices." Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK)
U.S. vs.
Huawei: Sequence of Events
The U.S. sanctions against Iran were a warning to the world that absolutely
no American high-tech products of any kind could be exported to Iran.
This is not about shutting
down the transfer of electronic funds. We’re talking physical things.
• “US law prohibits exports
of certain US-origin technologies to certain countries. When Huawei pays to
license certain US tech, it promises not to export to certain countries like
Iran. So it is not unreasonable for the US to punish Huawei for flouting this
US law.”
—Prof.
Julian Ku, Hofstra University Law School
• Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou was
arrested in Vancouver Dec. 1 at the behest of U.S. authorities and held for
extradition and trial. On Friday she was charged with conspiracy to defraud
banks.
• Huawei exports and re-exports American
technology to Cuba, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. —The
New York Times
• "Huawei used an unofficial Hong Kong
subsidiary named Skycom Tech to transact business in Iran for Iranian
telecommunication companies," Crown attorney John Gibb-Carsley alleged in
a Vancouver courtroom.
• Skycom tried
to sell 1.3 million euros ($1.7 million) worth of Hewlett-Packard Co. computer
gear to Iran in late 2010, according to Reuters.
• Skycom
employees worked for Huawei, the U.S. alleged. Ms. Meng was said to have been a
director of Skycom at one point, Reuters reported in 2013. Another director of
Skycom, Hu Mei, appeared to have a Huawei email address and was listed in that
company’s employee directory, Reuters reported.
• Former
employees of Skycom have stated that it was not distinct from Huawei, and that
Skycom employees had Huawei email addresses and badges, according to a Canadian
court filing. Documents obtained through an investigation by U.S. authorities
show that multiple Skycom bank accounts were controlled by Huawei employees,
the filing said.
• Meng Wanzhou hid
ties between Huawei and Skycom, U.S. alleges. —Nico
Grant and Natalie Obiko Pearson, Bloomberg.com
Ergo FRAUD!
How Sick Is China? Very. And Then Some.
• According to a 2017 report by the United States Trade Representative, Chinese theft of American Intellectual Property currently costs between $225 billion and $600 billion annually.
—Prof. Paul Goldstein, Stanford Law School
• Chinese counterfeiting now
costs foreign firms an estimated $20 billion a year in lost profits.
"In the case of one consumer goods manufacturer, as much as 70 percent
of the goods on the markets are counterfeits," says professional fake
buster Charles Scholz. He adds, "Anything from shampoo that might burn
your head, batteries that only work for two days before they cut out,
light bulbs that go out after two days."
A five-hour drive out of Shanghai is the city of Yiwu, which calls
itself the "Capital of Small Commodities." This is where international
buyers come to purchase knockoffs in bulk. Some 40,000 wholesale shops
sell about 100,000 products that are up to 90 percent fake.
Just across the border from Hong Kong, the town of Shenzhen has become a
Mecca for cheap knockoffs. With small cameras under wraps, ABCNews
found an amazing variety and quantity of copies. Not only were there the
latest DVDs, like Monsters, Inc. for $1 each, the latest software, like
the newest version of PhotoShop and Windows, at one-tenth the cost, but
just about every consumer product imaginable.
—Mark Litke, ABCNews
• The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies. The
attack by Chinese spies reached almost 30 U.S. companies, including
Amazon and Apple by compromising America's technology supply chain,
according to extensive interviews with government and corporate sources.
—Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley, Bloomberg News
• Chinese Murder Thousands of U.S. Beloved Family Dogs
PETCO
became the first national pet food store to halt the sale of
Chinese-made treats this week, due to concerns over contamination—but it
won't last. Already the rival retailer PetSmart has announced that it
will follow suit in taking Chinese pet treats off store shelves. Over
1,000 dog deaths have been linked to problems with imported jerky
treats, but this problem goes back years. The Food and Drug
Administration has been investigating thousands of reports of pet
illnesses linked to jerky treats going back to 2007, most of which
involve Chinese products, though there's been a spike since last
October.
—Bryan Walsh, TIME
• From China to Panama, a Trail of Poisoned Medicine
The
kidneys fail first. Then the central nervous system begins to misfire.
Paralysis spreads, making breathing difficult, then often impossible
without assistance. In the end, most victims die.
Many of them are children, poisoned at the hands of unsuspecting
parents. The syrupy poison diethylene glycol, is an indispensable part
of the modern world, an industrial solvent and prime ingredient in some
antifreeze. It is also a killer.
—Walt Bogdanich and Jack Hooker, The New York Times• Amazon's Counterfeit Problem
The company is facing multiple lawsuits from brands who say it does not do enough to prevent fakes from being listed on its website.
—Alana Samuels, The Atlantic
• Yekutiel Sherman's Brilliant Kickstarter Idea was on Sale in China Before He Had Even Finished Funding It
Yekutiel Sherman couldn't believe his eyes. The Israeli entrepreneur had spent one year designing the product that would make him rich—a smartphone case that unfolds into a selfie stick. He had drawn up prototypes, secured some minimal funds from his family and launched a crowdfunding campaign. He even shot a professional promo video, showing a couple taking a perfect selfie in front of the Eiffel Tower.
—Josh Horwitz, QUARTZ, qz.com
Takeaways to Consider
•If
you contract with a manufacturer in China to produce your proprietary
product, expect a duplicate production line across town pumping out your
product and selling it all over the world at a fraction of your MSRP.
And don't be surprised to see it at discount stores all across the U.S.
as well as on eBay and Amazon.
• If you go the CrowdFunding route you can expect your product to be on sale worldwide before you have your money.
• The only sure, safe way to test the marketability of a new product or service is by direct mail.
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Word Count:1907
Denny,
ReplyDeleteGreat article; a chilling reminder that we are dealing with a county that has grown powerful with our ideas and technologies, but has been dealing off the bottom of the deck the whole time. This situation alone is enough to start bringing what's left of your company back home while you still have some control over your business future; otherwise, you may well have no future. On another point, the direct marketing approach may well be the best way to secure our elections from hacking. Pencil and Paper aren't sexy, but they're hard to hack! Regards, Tom
Hey Tom, Thank you for taking the time to comment. This post was long, fact-filled and perhaps tedious. But I think important. I read 19 long newspaper accounts of this arrest and detention of Huawei’s CFO in Canada and no one journalist nailed the complete story. This is a U.S. sanction against selling American high-tech products to Iran and a huge Chinese company flouted the sanctions. None of the stories mentioned the mischief/evil Iran is committing in the Middle East with its leaders’ avowed intent to stir the pot, cause a refugee crisis, cause the deaths of tens of thousands of men, women and children and eliminate Israel. God bless the Canadians for going to bat for the U.S. after the insults and shabby treatment of their P.M. by our president. We don’t live in interesting times. We live in terrible times. I was around when Ike was president. He was calm, noble, ran the country quietly and with dignity. We were able to get on with our lives without thinking about the Washington and the world. Ike’s one big boo-boo came late in his magnificent career—authorizing a U-2 flight over Russia on the eve of a major international conference. He is ranked #5 in the C-SPAN list of great presidents after Lincoln, Washington, FDR, and Theodore Roosevelt. God I miss that kind of quiet, competent leadership! Thank you again. Do keep in touch. —DH, dennyhatch@yahoo.com
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