What would kiteboarding look like without China?

[kitexpert]

In last 6000 years China has been the biggest economy in the world for 5800 years. It has also had by far the biggest population. Now China has survived quite well from Corona crisis and apparently it will be even stronger in near future compared to western world.

I don't see it very relevant to think how much we rely on China for kites when other much more important dependencies exist.

[blythe]

Kite production will move out of China because labor is too expensive there now.

[Saltyman]

Sri Lanka and Bangladesh will be the new China.
North and I think duotone are already produced in Sri Lanka.

[Bille]

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

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


Bille

And what did i do last night ??

This hypocritical guy ; just checked to see if the 2020 Pansh , 13m
Aeolus, was on the market yet !!

Talk all kinds of crap :
But in the end ,it was the cheeeeeeep price , on that foil kite, that keeps drawing
me back ; it was like i couldn't Help myself , when i went to look .

Sorry : Bille

[drsurf]

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

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


Bille

And what did i do last night ??

This hypocritical guy ; just checked to see if the 2020 Pansh , 13m
Aeolus, was on the market yet !!

Talk all kinds of crap :
But in the end ,it was the cheeeeeeep price , on that foil kite, that keeps drawing
me back ; it was like i couldn't Help myself , when i went to look .

Sorry : Bille

And therein ends the lesson

[TomW]

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.

Deserves to be pinned to top of forum.

[Kozzie]

If you all want to know what would happen then just look at what happened to GIN (they make some best paragliders in world and some kites) when north korea took theyre factory.

https://paragliding.rocktheoutdoor.com/ ... roduction/

[elguapo]

well..

#1 we wouldnt have had this damn virus.

[longwhitecloud]

There is enough bull$hit country based politics online already constantly infecting peoples brains through the bull$hit media (inc advertising social media feeds influenced by algorithms designed to keep you addicted) where the only objective is to keep you reading for advertising $$. The more confronting the opinions the more people eat it up, the more advertising $ they make.

I don't mind some piss taking kite politics, but the last thing I want to read about is world politics.

fu#$ this, when you travel all over the world you learn that most people are fundamentally good people even if they do things a bit different from you.

[CrazyFly official]

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

Boards yes. Kites I don’t know.

Just to confirm, we make all our products in our own factory in Slovakia (not Slovenia). This includes: kites, boards, bars, foils (except Up and Master) and accessories like pads, straps, fins etc.
At the moment, we only buy one raw material from China.

Few days ago, we released new videos showing our production: