City Centre at Kamal Pokhari has recently started to stock its shelves with Tihar candles, dry fruits and lights, including a very fancy portrait of the goddess of wealth that goes all disco when you plug it in. While regular Nepali-made diyos at Ason cost 10 bucks, fancy electric reusable lights at City Centre are 20 bucks. [break]
Therefore, like all my middle class neighbors, my Mom has abandoned the traditional stores to shop for the Tihar goods at a fancy supermarket this year.
Now, even though the consumer protection body seems to have finally awakened from its prolonged lull, nobody has yet complained about supermarkets selling cheap Chinese lights even though everybody goes to supermarkets for their groceries these days.
Even Dipendra Dai tells me that you get the best ice at City Centre. So now when I have friends over to my place for whiskey on weekends, Dipendra Dai has to walk all the way to Kamal Pokhari to get ice. He doesn’t complain.
In fact, he too buys a lot of milk for Angel. Angel is his son. He drinks a lot of milk and is almost overweight for his age. But Dipendra Dai isn’t complaining about City Centre selling milk at a price that the grocery store next to my house can’t compete with.
How these fancy supermarkets are able to sell milk at such bargain prices is a mystery to me. It may be because they have a better supply chain management system.
Or the shareholders are willing to forgo fat profit margins. Or maybe its employees are less well paid. Or maybe Min Bahadur Gurung has a giant holy cow hidden somewhere in a dark room at Bhatbhateni, making milk just like turning on a faucet. But nobody really cares, and nobody seems to be complaining.
So why should we complain about China selling us cheap clothes and Tihar lights? We blame China for selling us cheap products because it doesn’t pay its workers well enough.
We blame China for selling us cheap products because it keeps its currency undervalued. We blame China for causing our over-consumption and excessive borrowing because China sells products to us too cheaply.
We have coined a sophisticated phrase, “global imbalance,” to describe our over-consumption and excess borrowing, and we lay the blame on China. We rejoice when other countries put pressure on China to re-evaluate its currency so that it will not sell us cheap products anymore.
This to me is similar to food addicts whose habit of excessive eating is so strong to control that the only way they can eat less is by asking the restaurants to sell food at higher prices. Not that they aren’t overpriced already.
Dipendra Dai really likes Chinese-made cheap products. He bought a good quality cheap tracksuit for his son at some store this Dashain with the money I gave him.
He decorates his house with Tihar ornaments. By the way, they are all imported from China.
In fact, Dipendra Dai’s family that consists of his father, mother, wife and a son would have gone under if he hadn’t been able to buy cheap chairs, cheap fancy clothes, cheap furniture, cheap cooking pots and cheap cooking supplies made by and imported from China.
Therefore, if we don’t complain about supermarkets selling cheap milk, we shouldn’t complain about China’s cheap clothes, cheap Tihar lights, cheap shoes and cheap currency, either.
If China wants to sell us cheap goods at very affordable prices, it makes absolutely no sense from a buyer’s point of view to discourage it, just as it makes absolutely no sense to discourage supermarkets from selling milk at a bargain price. So, to China I say thank you, for selling us cheap products.
Please do not listen to the US. The U.S. government does not really represent the silent majority of average Nepali households and businesses that make ends meet by relying on Chinese-made inexpensive products. Please, China, keep your products cheap as long as you want to.
However, I’m sure that some of you disagree and will opt to buy “branded” goods at ridiculous prices instead. Fine by me.
Only the next time you decide to pass on the cheap tracksuits at Sundhara because its “Made in China,” please remember: so is your iPhone, too!
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