Marketing: April 2009 Archives

China's exports fell by more than 17% in March, following a decline of 25.7% in February. This has been the trend for the last five months, since the beginning of the global financial crisis. About 140 million of China's migrant workers work in export industries. According to official figures, about 23 million of them lost their job since the beginning of the year. Many were sent on long "vacations" and/or are working less hours per week. The figures are based on data from December 2008, and cover only migrant workers, the most vulnerable segment of the local workforce. A more moderate rise in unemployment is visible in other parts of the economy as well. Taking into account the continued deceleration of China's growth over the past 4 months, it is safe to assume that the number of unemployed is now higher. 

An old Jewish joke says that modern society is based on the ideas of three old men: Marx said "Everything is about Money". Freud said "Everything is about Sex". Then, Einstein arrived and concluded that "Everything is Relative".

The Chinese economy has slowed down dramatically over the past six months and demand for real estate in China's major cities declined sharply. Concurrently, new data has been published about the disparity between China's male and female citizens and the subsequent troubles Chinese men face when trying to find a wife. Now, a local Real Estate Developer is trying to strike a new balance between Marx and Freud in order to get the market going again.

A couple of months ago, (parts of) the world celebrated the 200th of Charles Darwin's birth. The british scientist published On the Origin of Species in November 1859, ten months after Karl Marx published his theory of Historical Materialism in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.

"The first stage of the economy's domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having -- human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing -- all "having" must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. At the same time all individual reality has become social, in the sense that it is shaped by social forces and is directly dependent on them. Individual reality is allowed to appear only if it is not actually real."