Are the Chinese dumping photo gear?

gone · Apr 6, 2015

We sometimes order photography items from China, but my last purchase has me rethinking this policy. I bought a step down adapter for my Canon lens, and after a month of Sundays it finally arrived Saturday. What gets me is that the packaging has a stamp on it for $3.10. I only paid $1.85 for the item w/ free shipping. Is there some sort of currency thing going on that I'm ignorant of (it sure looks like US $3.10 on the stamp), or are they dumping things at a loss in order to corner the market on some items? It's not the first time I've seen Chinese items on eBay that are so cheap it is hard to understand how they are making any money.

BrianShaw · Apr 6, 2015

It's not just photo gear.

Colin DeWolfe · Apr 6, 2015

A lot of countries use the dollar sign for their own currency, even if it's not called a dollar (ex: Argentinian Peso). In this case, the package cam from Hong Kong. a Hong Kong dollar is worth 13 cents USD. Uses same symbol. So, it cost them 40 cents.

TheFlyingCamera · Apr 6, 2015

Those are Hong Kong dollars, not US dollars. $3.10 HKD = $0.40 USD.

Colin DeWolfe · Apr 6, 2015

A lot of stuff you see on eBay which seems too cheap from China, most likely "fell off the back of the truck" at the shipping dock. Or is build from cosmetically blemished parts.

paul_c5x4 · Apr 6, 2015

I can't but help wondering if the Chinese government is subsidising the postal charges. 40 cents doesn't even cover the airfreight costs, let alone the delivery from customs to your door (the final mile).

trythis · Apr 6, 2015

The cost of living in China is very different than the cost of living in the US. Chinese wages are also much lower than ours so everything is cheaper there, that's why so much that is made in China, including the stamps.

Typos made on a tiny phone...

TheFlyingCamera · Apr 6, 2015

Also, bear in mind that this appears to have come first class mail, not air freight. I think US airmail first class still comes in at under $1, or pretty close to it. So 40 cents isn't that far out of whack.

ic-racer · Apr 6, 2015

Not sure of what you speak. The few Chinese film photography items of which I am familiar are quite expensive and increasing in price. The same 8x10 Shen-Hao camera I got for $1800 USD a few years ago is now almost $3000 USD. Shanghai 8x10 film is still pretty expensive and hard to find. The $300 USD plastic Seagull TLR is more than a used Rolleiflex.

Xmas · Apr 6, 2015

If it took a long time to arrive it was shipped in a big container.
Apart from being as curious as NSA and damaging the environment more than (or nearly as much as) the USA, they are wonderful suppliers.
Some of the HK suppliers are real prompt.
My K1000 is uber reliable.

Noel

480sparky · Apr 6, 2015

Most of the stuff is shipped through EMS. I have no doubt they just collect all the stuff headed for a given country, and stuff it all into a container when they get enough stuff to make it profitable to send it off.

gone · Apr 6, 2015

Ah, so $3.10 Hong Kong is 40 cents US (about the true worth of the US $3.10 if you ask me). Now it makes sense. So they certainly could have made a profit even after deducting the 40 cents from the $1.85 US that I paid if they made it cheaply enough. Good. I won't knowingly buy anything that is being dumped into the country. That's counter productive to the economy in the country where one resides. Now if we could just convince the US manufacturers to build their products in the US instead of farming the production out to off shore labor......but that will probably never happen.

Yes, it took over a month to arrive, unlike other, bigger purchases from there that took very little time. One thing I liked is that the envelope was "sealed" by a simple piece of string on the other side. It was simply wrapped around a couple of nylon washers on the envelope. It wasn't even knotted, simply twisted on there. Anyone along the way could have untwisted it, removed whatever was inside, and put it back like it was w/ no sign of tampering. Sort of like the yak string on the FSU stuff. Pretty neat. In this country, I might have received an empty envelope :{ Sadly, it has happened before.

Mainecoonmaniac · Apr 6, 2015

The Chinese is dumping photo gear and other items. The U.S. Government has accused the Chinese of undervaluing the Yuan to keeps their good cheap. Communist officials in Beijing have to keep a billion people employed or else they'll be another revolution. That's their biggest fear. But the reality is that it's not sustainable.

gone · Apr 6, 2015

I remember that years ago years ago it was the Japanese dumping semiconductors and steel. Or at least that's what I was told by the media and this government. Who knows what was really happening?

I'm sure every country in the world has, or is, doing something similar at some point, including the one that I live in. My personal policy is not to buy anything that is being dumped once I know about it, nor to buy products that are made by prisoners against their will. To my knowledge, and I haven't done any in depth research on this, this isn't going on anywhere that I can prove.

I know that in the US, anyone w/ a license tag on their car is probably running around w/ a prisoner made item, but as far as I know the work was voluntary, and paid at least a tiny amount to the prisoners. Dumping and electronics seem to have a long history together.

Mainecoonmaniac · Apr 6, 2015

It's very tough to be a concise consumer Momus. I really don't blame a working family to try to get the best price on an item. The reality is that the middle class is being squeezed by corporations while on the other hand, there are price pressures on businesses for the lowest cost. For a while now, there have been tons of shoddy crap and bad food produced at very low financial cost. There are other costs to the environment, animals and workers. The latest I'm hearing is seafood caught by fishing boats manned by slaves. I think consumers are at a saturation point with consumer goods and some are demanding information of how it's sourced. Consumers wield a lot of power concisely or unconscisely by how we spend our dollars.

DREW WILEY · Apr 6, 2015

The typical lingo for this is "outsourcing", which is how marketing monkeys excuse what is more often simply "bait and switch" when it comes to quality. For quite awhile it has been policy for publicly-traded US corporations to function on a species of slash and burn, scorched
earth, instant stock market gratification model of business. You get a big crop for a year or two, and then nothing of value ever grows there again. I had a discussion with a customer about this less than five minutes ago. I sell equipment, and have largely had to import from Germany to find anything any good anymore, since most US labels now no longer even pay taxes to the US, let alone manufacture anything here. This is not necessarily the pattern when it comes to specialized cottage industries in China. Some really nice view cameras are currently being made there.; but that's not the kind of commodity that attracts corporate vultures like WalMart or Home Cheapo.

blockend · Apr 6, 2015

As someone who regularly buys lens adaptors, hoods and similar accessories from Hong Kong, I've often wondered how they can make and send a nicely machined and threaded component half way round the world, for little more than the UK postage price of sending a 35mm film to a lab (processing excluded). It has given a new lease of life to a lot of old film gear - not to mention manual lenses on digital cameras - but it's hard not to wonder where such price slashing will end.

DREW WILEY · Apr 6, 2015

It a crap shoot. I've seen some lensboards and rings made in China which were decent, and others which were simply terrible and didn't fit at all. One step ring I ran into the other day was painted rather than anodized. The black came off with simple lens cleaner and made a mess. You get what you pay for, though not always. We have a family friend who worked awhile for a camera bag importer. China was too expensive for them so they needed a cheaper sweatshop source. But a bag that typically cost an American consumer $75 or more in a retail outlet generally cost around $2 to make, with the worker themselves making only a few pennies apiece. This is not an exaggeration. I've been carrying around a couple of 6x7 bodies in a shoulder bag that cost me $4 wholesale. It would have been $100 in a camera store. I prefer real US made backpacks for anything heavy like my 8x10, but this means something made in the 60's or 70's.

benjiboy · Apr 6, 2015

Haven't you heard "capitalism is savagery", and the biggest irony of all is that China the World's biggest Communist state is out - capitalisting all the Western capitalist countries, and we in the West I.M.O. should be very worried at the rate that China is buying land, companies and resources in South america and Africa and other emerging economies which will in the next fifty years enable them to indulge in economic warfare with the West democracies and ruin their economies without spilling a drop of blood in conventional warfare, because the U.S.A. is in debt to China as of 2012 already to the tune of $1.317 trillion dollars and the debt is constantly rising.

MartinCrabtree · Apr 6, 2015

I've a feeling in the next 50 years China will lose more than a generation to disease from environmental poisoning. Sad.

Mainecoonmaniac · Apr 6, 2015

It's not warfare in the ordinary sense

benjiboy said:
Haven't you heard "capitalism is savagery", and the biggest irony of all is that China the World's biggest Communist state is out - capitalisting all the Western capitalist countries, and we in the West I.M.O. should be very worried at the rate that China is buying land, companies and resources in South america and Africa and other emerging economies which will in the next fifty years enable them to indulge in economic warfare with the West democracies and ruin their economies without spilling a drop of blood in conventional warfare, because the U.S.A. is in debt to China as of 2012 already to the tune of $1.317 trillion dollars and the debt is constantly rising.

Most countries see the U.S. as a safe haven to park their money and China is no different. The Chinese are very hard working and savers. While Americans like their leisure and get into debt. These are generalizations of course. There is no doubt that we are compromising our national security by allowing our debt grow to such proportions. Also, their brand of capitalism is a hybrid much like Russias. True capitalism everyone participates, not just a few that have access to power.

DREW WILEY · Apr 6, 2015

What China is doing is unsustainable at several levels - economic, environmentally, and politically. That's why they're often on edge trying to keep the steam engine from overheating and blowing up. But the US corporations have been pretty much deliberately shooting themselves in the foot just to satisfy the short-term greed of a tiny percent of the population. There's a bit of rebound from that path now that real-world expenses get factored in, such as the limitations of a very long intermittent supply chain. Most of the time a bargain isn't really a bargain. But the average MBA is dumber than anyone on the planet other than the CEO who hired. That's why I try to do business only with privately held corporations whenever possible. But I'm due to retire soon, thank goodness. Yet there is a whole other side to the equation - the Chinese have gotten dependent upon us as consumers, and that fact has opened up the country quite a bit. Like many countries, including our own, the goodwill of the people in general shouldn't be confused with the shenanigans of their political leadership.

Xmas · Apr 7, 2015

DREW WILEY said:
What China is doing is unsustainable at several levels - economic, environmentally, and politically. That's why they're often on edge trying to keep the steam engine from overheating and blowing up. But the US corporations have been pretty much deliberately shooting themselves in the foot just to satisfy the short-term greed of a tiny percent of the population. There's a bit of rebound from that path now that real-world expenses get factored in, such as the limitations of a very long intermittent supply chain. Most of the time a bargain isn't really a bargain. But the average MBA is dumber than anyone on the planet other than the CEO who hired. That's why I try to do business only with privately held corporations whenever possible. But I'm due to retire soon, thank goodness. Yet there is a whole other side to the equation - the Chinese have gotten dependent upon us as consumers, and that fact has opened up the country quite a bit. Like many countries, including our own, the goodwill of the people in general shouldn't be confused with the shenanigans of their political leadership.

Mathew 7.3?

DREW WILEY said:
What China is doing is unsustainable at several levels - economic, environmentally, and politically.

or kettle calling pot black - for non Christian majority...

e.g. the reason you have a large debt is the Fed Guv has been fighting wars and subbing proxy's on credit rather then taxing cause taxing would have been political suicide?

You ran out of dollars in Nam... lots of denial on that...

DREW WILEY said:
Yet there is a whole other side to the equation - the Chinese have gotten dependent upon us as consumers, and that fact has opened up the country quite a bit.

The typical Ch industry worker only gets a living wage but lots of their people appear as tourists in London and speak English effortlessly without any sing song or USA style accent. Lots of their market is 3rd world as well as Ja and EC. They are attempting to develop 3rd world countries that the west has 'ignored'.

My Iphone in Made in Ch, my work docking laptop is Made in Ch, my flash light is ... My K1000 from past is still going without any need for a CLA...

The Yaun will soon be a reserve currency.

Back on thread topic :- Our shipping container parks are full of Ch shipping containers...

ic-racer · Apr 7, 2015

Not sure of what you speak. The few Chinese film photography items of which I am familiar are quite expensive and increasing in price. The same 8x10 Shen-Hao camera I got for $1800 USD a few years ago is now almost $3000 USD. Shanghai 8x10 film is still pretty expensive and hard to find. The $300 USD plastic Seagull TLR is more than a used Rolleiflex.

Can someone please post links to the dumped Chinese film gear in question? I'm interested in inexpensive film, cameras, chemistry, darkroom equipment or lenses.

gzhuang · Apr 7, 2015

A good place to pick up stuff on China's online market would be www.aliexpress.com. The delivery time is much faster compared to eBay.

Are the Chinese dumping photo gear?

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Are the Chinese dumping photo gear?

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