17 October 2006

The great Walmart of China

Wal-Mart looks poised to horn its way into the Chinese market with a one billion USD purchase of a Chinese retail chain.

I'm not exactly a successful capitalist, so this isn't an expert opinion, but I don't see how their business model is going to work in China. Are they going to sell cheap clothes manufactured by prisoners in Arizona or twelve year olds in Idaho? There's no shortage of prisoners but how will they get twelve year old American kids to work? And they are going to have to competition that, despite Wal-Mart's seeming dominance in America, are just better at oppressing the workforce than they are.

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