#35 HUAWEI: Sick Ad. Sick Company. Sick China. [Sic!]

Issue #35 — Tuesday. December 11, 2018

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2018/12/35-huawei-sick-ad-sick-company-sick_11.html

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.

The Huawei Ad Is a Reminder of China’s Morbid

Obsession with the Mutilation of Women’s Feet 

 

A Short Film by Jo Farrell

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 10^th to 20^th 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 the world’s 7^th largest tech company with 2017 sales of $89.3 billion.

• “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.

Silkmarket, Beijing, One of China's Massive Counterfeit Centers

• 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.

But one week after his product hit Kickstarter in December 2015, Sherman was shocked to see it for sale on AliExpress—Alibaba's English-language wholesale site. Vendors across China were selling identical smartphone selfie-sticks, for as low as $10 a piece, well below Sherman's expected retail price of £39 ($47.41). Amazingly some of these vendors stole the name of Sherman's product—Stikbox.
—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.

• Unless you are an expert in offers, pricing, copy, design, U.S. Postal Service regulations, lists and list rental, hire a professional.

###

Word Count:1907