Crash dummies countries

Chinese cars..... better stay away from them, at least for some more years. This SUV displayed the worst result ever in a safety crash test.

I personally drive a Korean car (Hyundai Getz) which has received 4 out of 5 stars in crash safety.

And everyone knows the overall high quality of Japanese cars.

More generally, while Japan and South Korea are world leaders in technology, innovation and product recognition and quality, mainland Chinese products are usually cheap, low quality imitations.

So why is it that these three countries (mainland China, Japan, South Korea) that seem so near (from a European perspective) perform so differently, industrially and technologically?

An obvious reason has to do with their economic systems. While Japan and South Korea have benn capitalist for decades, China has only relatively recently started to unleash its economic potential through liberalization of its economy. So the two former countries have a serious headstart in terms of industry development. To reinforce this point, one can consider the following comparison:

Communist mainland China and capitalist Taiwan are both populated by chinese majorities. Taiwan has 1/60 of the population of mainland China, but almost 1/12 its wealth. The average GDP in Taiwan for 2004 was five times as much as in mainland China, despite the huge leaps that China has done in the last years. The disastrous effects of maoist policies are therefore still very evident in China, whose population has huge untapped potential, as the comparison with Taiwan reveals.

Still, China's late start does not fully explain the huge disparity in product quality. Japanese or South Korean products have never been, even in their infancy, so dreadful as Chinese products, in terms of quality. I think the political climate in each country plays a role here. Japan has been a democracy since WWII, while South Korea was never as totalitarian as China and has been a full-fledged democracy for over a decade. China on the contrary is still a police state. In a police state, there can be no consumer associations, no public outcries over bad company conduct, no mass media hysteria over malfunctioning and potentially life-threatening irons, toys or tosters. Chinese companies, often fully owned by the state, operate with immunity and endager the lives of helpless and voiceless chinese citizens. Therefore, until these companies are sufficiently export-oriented in order to improve their quality procedures, or until China finally becomes democratic, it is wise to be weary of mainland chinese products and stay away from their cars.....