What would kiteboarding look like without China?

[prop_joe]

The Chinese people are industrious, talented, and productive. It is sad that their oppressive government do not have a clue. Bully tactics are not going to bring Western Companies around, nor lying to the world about the disease. They don't get that transparency is vital in a global economy. The people of China will suffer because of the foolishness of their leaders.

"The Chinese people are industrious, talented, and productive." all 1.393 billion of them? Bit of a generalisation......

Haha, i'm pretty certain the inverse of this would be considered highly racist. Funny how racism is okay as long as it's nice racism lol. Probably why so many people get themselves into trouble over it... there's no rules to the game, just how any one individual feels at any given moment... it's all nonsense.

[Bille]

I prefer to buy from other countries too.
Made in EU or USA...happy to support.

Given a choice ; so would i !! -----------


Bille

[Havre]

I prefer to buy from other countries too.
Made in EU or USA...happy to support.

All are free to do whatever they want, but would be rather counter-productive if we all limited ourselves to buying from certain countries or regions.

If all the Chinese only bought from China, all Europeans from EU or USA etc. you would have to duplicate (or potentially 200x) all kinds of production.

There are solid arguments for having many supply chains for medical equipment etc., but I find it hard to argue you need the same for kitesurfing. Not that China will forever be the production base of "everything" as China is already in many cases not the cheapest place to mass produce certain things.

[Leon van Bergen]

I prefer to buy from other countries too.
Made in EU or USA...happy to support.

I also try to buy as much as possible from Dutch companies, but take the Dutch Mystic for example; all made in china

[or6]

So political again, why?
Just keep it kite (gear) related and it’s fine.
Rest goes to bin. Thx!

[matth]

Does Crazyfly make most of their product in Europe????

[HugoMC]

Does Crazyfly make most of their product in Europe????

Boards yes. Kites I don’t know.

[mplamplampla]

Does Crazyfly make most of their product in Europe????

Boards yes. Kites I don’t know.

Yes, they make also their kites at their factory in Slovenia

https://www.crazyflykites.com/inourhouse

[HugoMC]

Gaastra boards are made by CrazyFly in Europe. Kites are made in China.

[drsurf]

I think this whole discussion is a bit pointless. Virtually all countries rely on global trade and China is an intrinsic part of this. In the USA you may not want to buy kites etc made in China but your agricultural sector and mining/energy sector need to export to China to be viable. (ie. you produce way more food than you can eat). In Germany the high quality machine tool industries rely on China as a major market for their equipment to remain viable. Ditto car industries from many countries who have invested heavily in China as a massive market and to give economies of scale to enable their products to exported globally. Australia relies on China as a market for raw minerals and our tertiary sector relies on overseas students including China.

The interdependencies work both ways and some countries/companies are better negotiators than others. It's worth noting that whatever is said by a countries political leader needs to be fact checked. You will generally find that companies look to globalisation and therefore countries like China, India, Vietnam etc to conduct their business to be competitive and act in the interests of their shareholders. Companies competing across the world, and that includes many companies in the kite business, are funded by shareholders who want a return and unless there is shareholder activism, profits come before most other issues.

Countries like China and India also comprise a massive proportion of the worlds population therefore are massive markets. This scale of economy is also aided at present by demographics which give them a younger working age population migrating from the country to urban areas to improve their earning capacity as they look for more skilled work.

We're all together on this planet. If your neighbouring country pollutes the ocean and atmosphere you share, political borders are irrelevant. You'll get the toxins, CO2 etc in your water, air or food. If we don't learn to work with each other the future looks bleak.