Shenzhen Confidential

Shenzhen Confidential
Justin Mitchell
11 June 2007
A Russian smuggler's Chinese girl Friday tells Justin Mitchell about the
underbelly of the economic boom and what became of those 'cars.'






Hello, I'm Amy Jiang. On the surface, I could be a poster woman for the face of
modern China. I am a mostly successful 20-something, savvy English-fluent woman
with international business experience as a buyer and translator. But the truth
is that I'm currently working for shady Russian businessmen posing as legitimate
buyers in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. And while much of Shenzhen seems occupied with
smuggling counterfeit handbags and shoes to the west, Sacha and Bogdan, as we
will call them, are preoccupied with smuggling more serious stuff. Like buses,
among other things.




This Slavic odyssey across Southern China is in many ways a microcosm of the way
things get done by hundreds, perhaps thousands of ?businessmen? who have washed
ashore to take part in a kind of perfect storm of grey market commerce ? China?s
unending boom, spotty law enforcement and lack of government attention to the
finer points of things like smuggling and counterfeiting.



My career didn't begin this way. Following my graduation from university in
Dalian in northern China, I worked for Wal-Mart for three years, though boredom
and other missteps led me to another foreign company and finally to my current
situation. Between trying to untangle their efforts to smuggle Chinese-made
buses into Georgia, Ukraine or Romania, I am also sourcing asphalt from China
for potential customers in Lithuania while simultaneously arranging shipments of
fake Nokia parts stashed under legitimate Chinese-made underwear to Estonia. We
sent one shipment of vodka bottle caps ? called ?jar corks? in my bosses?
imaginative English ? to Russia. My bosses will buy anything they can buy and
ship it to anybody who wants it.




I am also trying to get the Russians? visas straightened out with equally
crooked bureaucrats at the Shenzhen Immigration Department. I stay on the right
side of the law myself. Maybe it's a good thing, because one of my former
Wal-Mart co-workers is currently doing time in a Shenzhen jail for bid rigging.




That's how business works for most of China, although I was surprised when I
took the job with this supposedly Moscow-based company that many of my duties
would be, to put it politely, questionable. There's also the communication
problem. I don't speak Russian and my two bosses don't speak Chinese. All of us
speak English ? some of us better than others ? but it is clear that the
English I learned in Dalian is not the same English that my managers say they
learned at language academies in Moscow and St. Petersburg, or, more likely, in
the bars and tattoo parlors of Novosibirsk.



The buses pose a special problem. Two months before I was hired they arranged
for four new buses (or "cars" as my employers refer to all vehicles) to be
shipped from Tianjin port on the Bohai Gulf to Poti, a port on Georgia's
southeastern Black Sea coast. Shortly after I arrived the Russians decided in
midshipment that they could reduce and/or dodge import taxes and fees by
rerouting the delivery north to Odessa in Ukraine.




The vehicles have been bouncing around the Black Sea for at least two months and
are currently in limbo (minus the proper documents) in containers at the eastern
Romanian port of Constanta (or ?Constanza Rumunia? as one boss calls it in
frantic e-mails urging me to straighten out a situation that was not mine to
begin with.)




In an e-mail he sent me about the situation, I was able to figure out what
"Rumunia" was, but was puzzled about references to ?SKG7700CE? and ?SKG7700CF.?




"Cars!" he shouted at me when I asked. "Chinese cars! You do not know the cars
of making your own country?"




As it turned out they are actually slightly different models of 18-seat buses,
but imagine my reaction when I received this e-mail:




Dear Amy,

We have two cantainers with 2 models of SKG770CE and 2 models of SKG7770CF which
now stay in Constanza (Rumunia). First we wished to send this containers to the
Georgia (Poti). But now we want to change port of destination and transport this
containers to the Ukraine (Odessa ). I want to ask you such thing. Are you
already do anything in occasion of changing port of destination?



For the four cars the shipper have no ownership after shippment, why did the
shipper take responsibility? So it's inconsequence, (I know someone will pay for
it, but we can not accept to write sentence: the shipper should take all
responsibility and fee.) Besides port of destination changing we need to changed
komany chop and signatures for this containers all documnets (for new
consignee):



Bill of Ladding (conosament)

-Inspection certificate

-Certificate of origin

-Packing list. I hope to listen to your answer as soon as possible!



With best regards,

Bogdan




Essentially, Bogdan believes that despite the fact that he ordered the buses and
arranged for their shipment, he has no responsibility for making sure the
paperwork is correct. He cannot understand why the Chinese bus manufacturer was
furious when, per Bogdan?s orders, I phoned to ask him to pay for new, probably
fake, documents. He was also upset when I accidentally discovered that the same
buses are currently being advertised for sale by him on a Russian website,
despite the fact that they have already been promised to buyers in Ukraine.




?How do you see this?? he asked when I asked him about the website, which,
thanks to Google, was automatically translated into passable English. ?It is not
me!" he said. "Not our Chinese cars. Other false cars.? What are the odds of
four other 18-seat Chinese buses with identical model numbers also sitting in
crates in Constanta? I wondered. But I did not ask any more questions.




But the buses-without-a-country are the least of their problems. Another
shipment of Chinese-made cars, in this case trucks bound for Georgia, was
recently rejected upon delivery by the buyer. In another linguistically
challenged e-mail, Bogdan described the situation and forwarded photos of the
offending vehicles.



Dear Amy,

I want to tell you problems which was with (Chinese company name) cars which
come to Georgia.



1)in all 12 tracks accumulators didn't starting.

2)don't work charging relay in all vehicles

3)don't work all gadgets in dashboard

4)If speed 100km/h the fifth gear is beaten out in a neutral position

5)The system of locking rear dorrs has rusted (look in attached foto)

6)on two vehicles left and right boards are different colours (blue and red).



It is necessery to make new order. We need 2 cars GDC-1030 (with boards) and two
cars GDC-6030 (with box).



Boxes for GDC-6030 must be with doors on right back side (not in rear of box as
we order last time). Colours of all cars -- White!



And more! Please check on what advertising material more they can provide us
(boards, cloth which is stretched above road...)



With kind regards,

Bogdan




Oddly, he does not want me to ask the manufacturer for a discount due to the
previous shipment's broken dashboard gadgets, malfunctioning accumulators and
faulty fifth gears. Maybe the fact that the trucks are dirt-cheap 100,000 yuan
has something to do with it. But I just received another e-mail asking again if
"more free advertising cloth which is stretched above the road" is available.
I'm guessing he's found a buyer for surplus Chinese advertising banners, but I
really don't want to know.




Ongoing sagas regarding smuggled vehicles aren?t this company?s main business,
however. Some get resolved more quickly, like the legitimate end of the company.
Officially I work for a textile exporter that supplies a distributor in St.
Petersburg with cut-rate Chinese lingerie, swimwear and sportswear. But even
that side of the business gets complicated when Bogdan and his partner delay
payments to the Chinese textile sellers in order to juggle the wobbly finances
fueling their major unofficial business ? shipping Shenzhen-manufactured
counterfeit Nokia, Motorola and Samsung cell phone parts and accessories (cases,
chargers, batteries, head sets) both in crates of Chinese-made clothing or
simply the parts themselves in boxes marked with Cyrillic letters as ?anything a
customer wants to say it is,? according to a Chinese co-worker who handles the
bulk of the several thousand phony phone parts shipped to Russia, Estonia,
Lithuania, Kazakhstan and Georgia per month.




Am I paid well? It?s a very slightly higher than average wage by white collar
Shenzhen standards (about 6,000 yuan a month, minus the social security payment
that Bogdan routinely ?forgets? to pay). But it?s not nearly enough to handle
the stress when Bogdan tells me he?s also once again ?forgotten? to pay the
company phone bill and yells at me because angry Chinese vendors complain that
they haven?t been paid.




?Those Russians never keep their promises!? is a frequent refrain from my irate
countrymen wondering when they will be paid for the US$50,000 worth of
sportswear shipped to St Petersburg. I can only sympathize and stall while
simultaneously trying to keep my professional poise and surf the ?Net for a new
job. This time, I?m in the market for something legitimate and if it?s a foreign
business, non-Slavic.




No more ?to Russia (or Georgia or Ukraine) with love? for me.

Comments (6)

Show/Hide comments
And yes, one more thing : CS
A Chinese blaming Russians for breach of promises is clearly a pot saying a
kettle is black. I'm in no way advocating Russians but excuse me, one should not
be a mainland Chinese to say smth like this.

Poor story, Justin.

June 17, 2007
once a traitor - always a bitch : CS : http://n/a
I totally agree "Amy's" English is way too good. Nothing like you would expect
from a graduatee of a provincial uni (though Dalian is a great city itself).
"Her" experience at Wal-Mart and especially working for the English-challenged
Ukrainians would have hardly afforded her practice good enough to polish the
language like this. Odds are it's a fake made by the editors to put up a juicy
topic.

Second, no matter what, but "Amy" gave away some sensitive crap about the people
who she was hired by and whose payments she accepted for quite some time. Timely
or not, with or without welfare - does not matter for now as she used to put up
with it no problem. Whoever picks her up from the gutter should clearly
understand she will have little inhibitation before spilling his beans to the
public again as soon as she decides it's time to move on.

June 17, 2007
.... : Misha
Very interesting, ochen' interesno, but her English is suspiciously good for
someone from Dalian...

June 15, 2007
.... : Vladimir
Gerald, I would not recommend you to hire this girl. Which country you are from?
Tomorrow you give her a little pressure at work, and she is going to curse your
whole nation. Think twice :)

June 14, 2007
.... : Gerald
If you are as fluent as you say you are,would you like to work in
Pharmaceuticals.I am a new company manufacturing and supplying FDA and NICE
quality solid,liquid and parenteral products.If you are ambitious in China and
want to earn we need you.

June 13, 2007
.... : singnuck
Brilliant - a great tale. So it's inconsequence!

June 11, 2007

as
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