Made In China

There was once a time when goods made in Japan or in China had the reputation, post WWII, of being inexpensive, but cheaply made, notorious for swift obsolescence. These were the first throwaways.

If you were looking for quality you looked to Switzerland, to Germany, to the United States, Czechoslovakia for quality goods. Japan and China eventually gained a reputation for producing cheap and reliable products, of decent and durable quality.

Under communism in Russia and China, art was notoriously produced by committee, whether it was the plastic arts, music, paintings architecture. Art, like any other kind of production was made by the people for the people and the result was impressively mediocre.

Until it was realized that special talent and unique creativity did not occur by committee. Which, unlike industrial or agricultural production required special appreciation of unique capability.

But because no one other than the entitled state elite was treated special and everyone was expected to contribute what they were capable of, and individual dedication and performance was never recognized nor adequately compensated since everyone's efforts, regardless of quality was similarly recompensed, the system failed, abysmally.

China and Russia both eventually adapted themselves to a form of capitalism that suited their cultural ideology, a more relaxed, less Soviet-style of communism. Which enabled them both to begin prospering.

And China in particular became a prosperous power-house of capitalist-socialist enterprise. Quality could be had, of workmanship and materials, but cheap production and short-cuts were what the world ordered of China.

And suddenly countries of the world began to realize they couldn't compete; their labour and material and energy costs were greater than China's, and their profit expectations were higher as well. China was prepared to sacrifice immediate profit for future gain.

The realization set in eventually that national governments were increasingly ordering from China items that could and should have been produced internally rather than imported. Say, for example, items that exemplified national iconic symbols.

Now comes the most absurd revelation of all. That a national monument to one of the social icons of America, the civil rights champion, Martin Luther King Jr., meant to sit in a place of honour in Washington, was produced by a Chinese artist well known for his work of sculpture reflecting the heroes of the Chinese Revolution.

The Chinese artist and sculptor Lei Yixin, was contracted to produce a Memorial to the great orator and pacifist and civil rights champion, and the finished product now stands proudly in Washington flanked by much earlier-produced (proudly American) monuments to Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.

The sculpture itself of Martin Luther King Jr. appearing like a blunt, sombre, unadorned piece of Soviet-era art. Doubtless Mr. King never had a dream that he would be celebrated by Americans flocking to see his image as produced by a Chinese artist as a national monument.

But perhaps, symbolically, it would have pleased him, as a symbol of transnational co-operation.