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Abstract
This paper seeks to add to our understanding of “low-end globalization” by exploring the processes through which copy goods are transported from China to various African countries. It begins by discussing low-end globalization and high-end globalization, different forms of globalization involving different forms of regulation and morality. It then considers copies, knock-offs, and contraband and their distinctions, and discusses African logistics agents in south China, and their major concerns in their work. It then examines the specific issue of how to get copies past customs in China. It then explores corruption, particularly in Kenya and Nigeria, and how this serves as an ongoing burden as well as aid for traders and logistics agents. Finally, it returns to the issue of copies—within the context of low-end globalization, copies may represent something beneficial to many of those who consume them, as a cheaper alternative to the goods of Global-North luxury that they cannot afford.
Notes
1 Muslim men may sometimes have more than one wife, as recognized by Islam. But it is religiously forbidden for them to have mistresses.
2 In this, I am scrupulously following the professional guidelines outlined by the American Anthropological Association (Citation2014).
3 This is not surprising. Worldwide, it is estimated that less than 5% of the goods passing through the world's ports are ever inspected (Nordstrom (Citation2007, 117–122), and inspected containers too may escape close examination. “In 2009 alone, Hong Kong airport authorities confiscated 510,000 counterfeit items” (Lin Citation2011, 36), but knowing what I know of the prevalence of copy goods in Chungking Mansions in 2007–2008, with even more copies in south China, this seems a very small number, perhaps no more than 1–2% of the total number of copies passing through the airport (see Mathews, Lin, and Yang Citation2014, 231 for a detailed calculation). One trader I spoke with guffawed at the idea of having his copy phones confiscated at the Hong Kong airport: “No one has ever had his phones confiscated in the entire history of the Hong Kong airport!” He exaggerates, but only to a degree.
4 Traders might make an exact copy of brand-name item, and then substitute their own label; or alternatively, they might appropriate the global brand name to place on an item of clothing having no relation to the brand's actual designs. These are very different forms of copying, both being common.
5 Sometimes, even an apparently catastrophic confiscation does not necessarily swallow up profits. I have heard of an African entrepreneur sending shipments of copy Viagra packaged to look exactly like the original. He sent shipments within three containers to Dubai; the first two got through, but the third was confiscated by customs agents in Shanghai. The Viagra cost him US$17,000 per container, and he was making US$37,000 in total, so the confiscation of the third container still left him with a substantial profit; he slipped away without ever being prosecuted.
6 However, while virtually every African trader I have met has a story of being cheated by a Chinese supplier or factory owner, long-term African logistics agents in China have generally given me a different interpretation. They said that African traders bargain to such a low price that Chinese suppliers, unused to setting a bottom line and desperate for business, cut corners in meeting those prices, and thereby manufacture shoddy goods. By this interpretation “Chinese cheating” may be a result of cultural miscommunication.
7 A referee for this paper has suggested that I provide customs agents’ and governmental responses to these charges of corruption. Every government official I have spoken with, whether from China, Kenya, or Nigeria, denies or minimizes the presence of corruption. But of course they have every reason to do this—why on earth would they tell me otherwise? Logistics agents, whom I typically know far better, also have reason to deny bribery, but because they pay rather than receive, and because they are not working for the government but are private, they have less to potentially lose through their disclosure to me. Transparency International has placed Kenya at 145 and Nigeria at 136, out of 174 countries ranked in terms of perceived corruption; China does somewhat better, at 100 (Transparency International Citation2014). These perceptions parallel the views offered in this paper.
8 Among Chungking Mansions phone dealers, copies are categorized as A-grade, B-grade, or C-grade, with A-grade as good as the original, and C-grade barely functional (see Mathews Citation2011, 115). It is easy for an unscrupulous merchant to pretend that C-grade copies are B-grade, or B-grade-A-grade.