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The Unauthorized State-Owned Chinese Disneyland
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu May 03, 2007 11:36 PM
from the just-like-the-real-thing dept.
from the just-like-the-real-thing dept.
rmnoon writes "Apparently Japanese TV and bloggers have just discovered Disney's theme park in China, where young children can be part of the Magic Kingdom and interact with their favorite characters (like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the Seven Dwarfs). The park's slogan is 'Because Disneyland is Too Far,' and there's even an Epcot-like dome. The only problem? Disney didn't build it, and they didn't authorize it. What's more? It's state-owned!"
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*smack*! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm confused (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Insightful)
China hasn't been socialist since their 1978 reforms. Disney hasn't been capitalist (in the sense of participating in a free market economy) since they bought the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998, and probably weren't before then.
If you're on the side of capitalism, support China. If you agree with Disney's destruction of the public domain, support them.
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Insightful)
But there is a substantive issue here, and it makes no sense to try to squirm out of it.
My view? The first world has mass-exported so much cultural material - Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, The USS Enterprise, Darth Vader, Batman - characters that have become embedded in our subconscious and become part of the fabric of mass culture itself - that I think it is only natural that it will break the boundaries of intellectual property, particularly in the peripheries outside the first world, where representations and images flow with a different logic entirely. What is really sad, actually, is that in Latin America, you see craftspeople making (illegal) ceramic and knitted versions of branded merchandise. The sad this isn't that - the sad thing is that, because they don't feel intimidated by IP law, that they are really being more creative/productive and original than people who merely consume "officially licensed" merchandise.
Re:*smack*! (Score:5, Insightful)
At some point, the people of this country will begin to recognize the true costs of doing business with China.
Re:*smack*! (Score:5, Insightful)
up into the 60ties.
Post war japanese companies copied like mad, you could
cross use spares.
Disney themselves stole most of their stuff from other countries
fairytails.
Re:*smack*! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:*smack*! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's wrong for china to steal stuff like Shrek or whatever else they've developed in recent years. I'd say it's morally just fine for them to steal old stuff like Mickey Mouse which by all rights should have been in the public domain decades ago.
Re:*smack*! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:*smack*! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:*smack*! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:*smack*! (Score:5, Insightful)
So why is it treated totally different by law? Copyright law is totally unjust and unfair in a historical perspective, now made to protect certain companies from what they originally profited from. But that's in America. Other countries don't necessarily have copyright protection for as long time.
Re:*smack*! (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope Pinocchio the Disney film came out exactly 50 years after Carlo Collodi the Italian author of "Le avventure di Pinocchio" died. Which means that it was in production when it was in copyright, and Disney released it as soon as they no longer needed to pay copyrights.
Or for something more recent you might try reading the Curious Clownfish [amazon.com] by Eric Maddern published 1987 and compare it to the Disney film Finding Nemo and ask why Eric Maddern has not received one penny from Disney.
Disney like copyright when it suites them, and at no other time. What I would like is for Disney to be forced to pay back compensation to the holders of the Pinocchio and other copyrights with interest for the time they infringed on their copyrights based on the new exteneded copyright periods. If the mouse deservers 90 years in the eyes of Disney, then so does Pinocchio. Perhaps then they would not be so keen on extending copyrights.
Re:*smack*! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:*smack*! (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about whether the Disney execs can afford another yacht, this is about the basic validity of IP law and what it's designed to protect.
Zippo currently estimates its sales are artificially lowered by 25% a year (likely a high estimate, but probably not too high) because of people purchasing Chinese-made copies. Zippo is a company in one town with one factory, and they recently had to lay off workers. Does your opinion change because of that?
Would your opinion change if you learned that my father risks losing a significant amount of money - one that may never be known - should someone steal the work of the inventor he's backing? Would it change if you knew we're an average middle class family with enough, but not a lot?
It shouldn't.
Re:*smack*! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:*smack*! (Score:5, Insightful)
China is to nations what Microsoft is to corporations, except far worse since they don't have to worry about legal issues beyond giving them lip service. They also have nukes and lots of tanks.
The saddest fact is that we can only blame ourselves. Congress continues to float bonds to finance our addiction to deficit spending. China buys them up secure in the knowledge that there is no political will in the US to actually balance a budget. Not only do we get completely outclassed in trade, they also are our banker-to whom we owe big time.
The upshot is we buy things we can't afford from China, paid for with money we borrowed from China.
How do you greet an overlord in Chinese?
Get used to it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Get used to it (Score:5, Informative)
Errr, you meant: Today, Disney. Today [wikipedia.org] GM. China's been accused of 'Auto Piracy' already.
Get used to it
Yup.
Re:Get used to it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Get used to it (Score:5, Funny)
No, the kitchen sink was yesterday.
http://www.globalsources.com/manufacturers/Stainle ss-Steel-Kitchen-Sink.html [globalsources.com]
Re: No. (Score:5, Insightful)
The reasons for Chinese imports being cheap are twofold - complete lack of environmental control and use of slave labour. Both can be dealt with by putting the relevant legal frameworks in place.
The framework for the environmental is very similar to the one established for food imports. All it requires is application to all goods. No exemptions. Licensing of importers and mandatory certification. Same as for food.
The labour is actually a comparatively minor addition compared to the rest as far as modern manufacturing is concerned. Badly payed and badly treated labour delivers bad quality product (if that was not the case we would have still be owning slaves like the ancient egyptians).
Once the primary cost factor which is the environment is put on equal footing you can compete with Chinese on quality, efficiency and innovation. Just look at the Wiki page of the same Cheery motors. They do not have any of their own R&D. If it was not for European R&D (and to lesser extent american R&D) they would be dead straight away. Add to that mandatory environmental control to which European (and American) businesses are subjected on a day to day basis and they will fade into their internal market for the next century.
Re: No. (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason for their extemely low prices is simple supply and demand. Labor is dead-cheap because there is so much of it. I got a beautiful painting about an hour outside of Guangzhou for about a buck twenty five. The painting is a very large, rougly seven-feet wide one. For the record, the painter was not a slave. It's just that that's the price he can charge, since there were literally thousands of others I could have gone to.
Now, I'm not saying that there isn't any slave labor in China. I have no idea; there probably are some instances of it, just like there probably are instances of it here in the US. But it is simply not what drives their economy. It's not even remotely related to their success as an economy.
Pollution is another matter. I've never been to a traditionally smoggy city in the US (say, Houston or LA) but Guangzhou had a blanket of smog a couple hundred feet above the surface at all times... I can actually remember the air being "heavy." It was a releif to get out to countryside, so we could see the sun again.
Re: No. (Score:5, Interesting)
But I have been to plenty of places with similar labour costs. In fact, I have lived in one for a while.
While what you are telling is correct for a painting, textiles and other "light industry", labour is only a minor part of the BOM for an heavy industrial product like a car, bicycle or modern toys. Environmental control on the other side is. It may account for 40%+ of the costs of plastics, 30%+ of the costs of metals (those pesky sulfur emissions controls, water quality control, cleanup of land destroyed by open mining, etc), 70%+ for some paints and coatings, 100%+ for some electronic components and so on.
Let's apply that to a pedal cycle - you have around 1 hour labour costs during initial assembly (everything including tires and all components), rest is BOM. The BOM difference between Chinese plastics, metal, tires, etc and _fully_ western Europe makes due to environmental regulations and mandatory acceptance for recycling for a bicycle can be close to 100 pounds (200$) at the moment. Compared to that the labour cost difference is negligible. If we look at any other product that makes heavy use of metal or plastics we get roughly the same proportions.
Further to this, if we look back at "light industry" like clothing the difference in quality between sweatshop labour and labour working in better conditions is also quite apparent. Compare a shirt made in China with one done in Bangladesh, Cambodja or Turkey. The quality difference is striking and these can nowdays often compete on quality alone (if the market is not perverted by "branding").
If China is left to compete on price of labour alone with the BOM costs equalized by mandatory environmental controls it will lose straight away to everyone else on quality alone.
Just Discovered? (Score:5, Informative)
Fun Rides (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fun Rides (Score:5, Funny)
too funny (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:too funny (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember that the term of copyright was only extended in the US. In China the protection term [wikisource.org] is still life+50years for personally owned works or 50 years since publication for companies. The film is public domain in China. (Incidentally a film published in 1937 is also public domain [copyright.org.au] in Australia.)
Interesting Twist (Score:5, Funny)
Or something like that.
Okay... (Score:5, Funny)
Time for disneys 70 year old copyright to expire (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it is time that the copyrights from 1920 or so expire for the enjoyment of all.
IP-based economies (Score:5, Insightful)
the problem is us, not them (Score:5, Insightful)
They're particularly unconvincing given that, by all rights, Mickey Mouse ought to be in the public domain by now. Other nations can have completely reasonable copyright terms and Mickey Mouse would still be in the public domain. It's the US that's unusual and unreasonable by having protected Mickey Mouse for another couple of decades through the Sonny Bono copyright extension act.
The public domain and limited copyright terms, two basic American rights, have been under attack in the US for the past century, and they have been replaced, effectively, with unlimited ownership of intellectual property. That's the real problem we need to address because that's what's really un-American.
Disney wrote Snowwhite? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually... (Score:5, Interesting)
Park's Official English Web Page (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.bs-amusement-park.com/ChinaIn/about-e.
To be honest, it wouldn't have been to hard to "discover" the park. It's connected to the Beijing subway, it's been open since 1986, and it's rated as a AAAA tourist attraction.
Can this be a good thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some shop opens up somewhere selling a particular kind of desert and becomes successful. Within 6 months there are maybe a dozen to be found within that city. Someone designs a particularly striking advertisement and it's only a matter of time because imitators appear. A news agency updates their look and almost over night everyone else does to.
You see it in small things too. My wife corresponds with an online community of Taiwanese living in the States. She has a blog, as many do. She has a fairly distinctive writing style which suits her personality. Inevitably someone came along and started copying her writing style. It got to a point where this particular girl started writing about the very same things my wife had written about previously.
China adds yet another dimension to this absurdity. Most people there are poor. We hear all this talk about the booming economy, the burgeoning middle class and all that. But the fact is that most Chinese are poor. And I mean living in poverty to a point that the so-called poor in the US haven't experienced. What does this mean? They can't afford all the shiny, impressive and absurdly expensive products made by foreign companies. So what have some enterprising Chinese done? They've made cheap, inexpensive knockoffs. Most are pure garbage, but they cost next to nothing and provide some level of the functionality found in the expensive foreign product. Some people may even be fooled into thinking they've purchased the real thing.
This sort of thing used to really frustrate me. Especially when it affect my work directly. At the time I'd think about how great it was that no one could get away with this sort of thing in the US.
But then I realized two things. First, it does happen in the US. Companies here just happen to be more careful about how they go about it. Look at Hollywood, and worse, look at the game industry. It's only logical that when people see something that has led to success they try to emulate it. The easiest way to enjoy some of that success is to resort to copying.
This leads me to the second thing I realized. I've come to think this is a good thing, within limits of course. There's a point at which a company or an individual has just gone too far and measures need to be taken.
Nevertheless, this sort of thing keeps innovators on their toes. It forces them to be competitive. Like I mentioned earlier, copying is a way of life in Asia. It means that people aren't sitting trying to figure out how to go about suing the offending party. They aren't whining to the government that someone has just ripped them off. Instead, their moving on to something else. In some cases, as it was with us, the frame of mind is one of trying to raise the bar further, to stand out from the imitators.
The other advantage here is that the imitators are slowly improving their own skill sets. They're being exposed to new ideas and learning from them, even if they don't realize it at the time. But it's something, over a long period of time that I believe leads to real progress.
The reality is that in most cases the imitations will never be anywhere near as good as the originals. So the ones actually producing something unique will always have the advantage. So as long as they don't get lazy they should be fine. If their in a situation where they're being seriously threatened by those copying it's almost certain they're doing something wrong.
I'm not suggesting a free-for-all where people can copy with impunity. Patents and copyrights are reasonable to a certain extent. I just feel that in some cases things have gotten out of hand. A real free market shouldn't have the absurd leve
Comrade Mickey Mouse..... (Score:5, Funny)
10: Every conceivable surface is painted red.
9: Skeletons, vampires, and other scary images replaced with pictures of famous American capitalists.
8: The "Mickey Mouseketeer Club" replaced with "Children Of The Chinese Communist Party"
7: Replaced the cars in "Autopia" with T-72 tanks
6: "Rocketship" ride has been replaced with "Nuclear Missile" ride.
5: Replaced the pirates in "Pirates Of The Caribbean" with American Capitalists.
4: Replaced mechanical puppets in "It's A Small World" with brainwashed dissidents singing at bayonet point.
3: Inserted subliminal propaganda messages into the "Tiki Hut" song.
2: Renamed Disnyland restaurant "Mickey Mao's"
1: Doubled the MSG content of the corndogs.
----
Re:Just goes to show.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't worry, the US did exactly the same thing in its infancy, ignoring European patents & copyrights at the govt level.
As soon as it became in the elite's interests to protect patents, copyright, etc, they were protected - the protections have become stronger & stronger over the years.
The same thing will happen in China. Get over it.
Re:Just goes to show.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh no, we mustn't get over it. Sackcloth and ashes everyone!
It's very important that we complain and moan about China, because we need someone to blame for the coming fall in living standards in the US. We also need to be painfully aware and forever complaining about other people's social problems so that we can be in continual denial about the ones that exist at our own doorstep.
It's in our local elitist's interests that we are unaware of the problems that they cause.
Re:Just goes to show.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Replace "Shouldn't" with "can't". What incentive do the Chinese have of revising their law to suit mega corps like Disney or GM? You cannot force it by arms because the conflict would annihilate civilization as we know it. You cannot do ti economically because the US has willingly entangled their economy deeply with china's. Your left with make a lot of noise and pretending your doing something.
China and the United States? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like Ikea. Ikea may have started in Finland, but they employ and enrich a heck of a lot of Americans. Toyota might have started in japan, but the US would take quite a hit if they suddenly wholesale pulled out of here.
The world is not a bunch of governments ruling over these little corporations who spread their tentrils forth for the motherland. Companies superceed governments. Sony exists as much in England and Europe as Japan, and does as much R&D around the world as in their original country. Sega was started by an American in Japan, and whose japanese-sounding name is actually an abbreviation for SErvice and GAmes. We think of Burger King as an amercan company because it started here. In Thailand, they think of Burger King as a Thai company, because the people who work there are Thai, the people who eat there are Thai, the people who make the Thai commercials for Burger King are Thai. Any given piece of electronics is likely to have bits designed in the US, EU, China, India, and many other places.
Companies are not part of a government. They are their own entities in a parallel system.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Interesting)
As to China, they are trying to position themselves to own the world economy and then control countries in manners that they see fit(a MUCH larger USA with a nastier attitude). It is not the stealing of ideas that is doing this. It is the fact that they have tied their money to our money at a fixed rate. If it was allowed to float, then it would have increased in a big way by now. Others have dredged up the typical neo-con argument that this helps the economy. And for a short-term, they are correct. But it destroys the manufacturing (read tax) base. Another argument is that China holds a huge amount of our cash. And they will laugh if it falls, so long as they are in control. In the past, America had large natural resources to fall in during those times. Not anymore. What this means is that when China wants to pull the rug on us, they will be in control. And that is going to happen in about another 15 years (or less).
W.'s going to argue about the copyright and patents is almost akin to chargin Charlie Manson with litter AND making a big deal of it. It totally ignores the real problems.
even if it were true - Re:Just goes to show.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, China exports vast quantities to the US - they'd never cause our economy to "crash" if they could help it. It would create massive social unrest over there (and they can barely keep a cap on what they've got happening even right now). China's going to have many, many significant, huge, social problems in the mid-term. Their "one country, two systems" thing is inherently unstable and will fail. If China ever copies the fine pre-handover Hong Kong example which the British left the world, then move over U.S., because we're going to get trounced. In the meantime, China will simply remain a cheap place to manufacture lower-technology goods. I include computers and HDTVs in the "lower-technology goods" category. They've got far to much to lose to damage us that way.
But one of the above posters is totally correct: The real threat - the one thing that could bring us down - is ourselves. FDR was right about fear. If the US goes down, it'll be because we did it to ourselves.
--
for more on this topic, check yesterday's post [slashdot.org].
-- Step Up Nihongo (learnjapanese.poddedcell.net)
Re:even if it were true - Re:Just goes to show.. (Score:5, Interesting)
What unutterable bollox. The US is the most insane investment a person could make right now. While the sheer inertia of trading methods keeps the dollar popular, the dollar itself if far from it...
Sterling, Euros, Yen!!!, they are all far more sensible places to put your cash these days, and the US is just terrified by this.
Of the two, I'd buy shares in Disneyland China (and no I don't care two hoots about American copyright law if America doesn't care two hoots about a nation's sovereignty - yes I talking Iraq - and not its not irrelivant. They're haveing the equiverlant of a 9/11 every month. That, to my mind is relevant in almost any discussion until it ends).
No I don't hate America. But I sure as hell hate its current polotics, and fundeMentalist interpretation of capitalism. Which as many posts have already pointed out, mean that in practice, China is actually closer to 'true' capitalism than they.
Yes, yes. This is Flamebait. But so is this agressive hypocracy spouted by the money mad global expantionist, overly competative expounders of "China is evil". And its getting on my nerves. [/rant]
Re:even if it were true - Re:Just goes to show.. (Score:5, Insightful)
What a quaint pov you have.
California, alone, if it were a country, would be ranked 8th in the world economically. It produces some four or five times more agriculture than the whole isle of England.
The US dollar being down is also a plus as it grows trade -- cheaper for countries whose monetary unit is pricier than ours to invest here. Growing trade is always a good thing.
The US economy is always changing, but by no means is it faltering or going away. Quite the contrary, it is the economic engine of the world. This may change, sure, but not any time soon. The dollar is still THE money of the world....
Re:If their policy on tattoos says anything... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If their policy on tattoos says anything... (Score:5, Interesting)
Who the hell do you think conquered India? The British? Well, yes, I grant you they were British, but they sure as hell weren't the British Government. It was the British East India Company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey), who were big enough at the time to make Ford, Coca Cola and Microsoft look like a crocked hat.
Note in the battle mentioned above, John Company fought against the Indian Princes and the French East India Company.
The equivalent today would be Halliburton fighting in Iraq against the Iraquis and Shell.
Modding this up would introduce Americans to a bit of history!!