Vendors at the foot of the Great Wall were disclosed to sell snack and other commodities at different price to foreign tourists from to Chinese at the foot of the Great Wall, criticized as discriminating against foreigners.
By Bernd Zhang
Calvin Lee: what?! that ain’t no discrimination. discrimination is when someone does sth unfair to another based on stupid reason like race, sex, religion, height, age….
charging foreign tourists assuming they are rich is kinda like making travelers pay a lot more $ for a first-class seat, or like charging male drivers higher insurance rates
no discrimination there. sad but true. just plain business.
马吉帝 Majdi Alhmah: While I disagree with Calvin, but I acknowledge that such practices are not even well accepted, but even praised as intelligence, to charge foreign (or rich) customers more money.
So using the same logic, Calvin, do you also feel it’s fair for:
1- Foreign companies, like cars and starbucks, to overprice their products to China 20-50% than Europe or North America just to make more profit because China [as a country] is rich? 2- and do you also agree with foreign companies abroad giving their Chinese employees less salary because they are not as rich as the Europeans?
Calvin Lee: points taken.
BUT, discrimination is being used to describe anything unfair nowadays.
with all due respect, the 2 things ur saying are very unfair but not discrimination. gotta draw a line somewhere. so, if money is involved, it shouldn’t be called discrimination. definitely called a rip-off, unfair, unjust, unlawful, inhumane, or whatever 🙂
just like, it wouldn’t be called prostitution if no touching ever happened LOL 😛
u ain’t see discrimination till ur in America.
Paul Bailey: Calvin, if I may interject…
Maj:
1. What is this “overprice”? The market says that if something is overpriced, then it won’t sell. The market decides that quite well. If there turns out to be great profit to be had, then competitors will surface to bring the supply up, and price down to meet demand.
Starbucks et.al. are not responsible for giving people a great deal per se. They are responsible for maximizing profit to satisfy investors and keep or expand their workforce.
In your company, do you determine what your customer will pay, then arbitrarily decide that’s too much and charge less? I don’t think so.
My take on the tourist trade is similar. Tourists will pay inflated prices, locals will not. What this segmented market will bear.
(reminds me of souvenier shopping trip gf and I made to wushan in Hangzhou. I was loading up with trinkets to bring back here and was pleased at the low prices. gf however could not abide. Rather than let me buy, she took us home and got on taobao. Got 5 and 10 kuai goods for 3 and 6 :D)
2. Foreign companies don’t ship employees overseas for fun. They fill positions that they can’t locally. It will be very difficult to staff an overseas office offering a local salary, when people they are trying to persuade are making x2 or x3.
I think American companies would be pleased to pay local salaries to qualified US staff. But how to persuade people to walk away from their comfortable life at $80k for the same job in China at $30k???
马吉帝 Majdi Alhmah: Paul. If vendor can put two price tags, one for tourists and one for locals, then it’s OK, but these vendors take advantage of the poor information available to tourists (which happens to tourists elsewhere too) and use deception techniques to convince them they are paying the same price; no vendor will tell tourists “frankly, you look rich, I normally sell a bottle of water for 3 yuan, but for you I will sell it for 10 yuan”… under a business model of supply/demand this is not a sustainable business and supply will soon outperform the demand, but this is happen in a liberalized market which has consumer protection agencies, which is not totally the story in China….
Paul Bailey: Hi Maj…I can’t feel too sorry for foreigner with enough money to leisurely travel China and pay 10kuai($1.30)for a bottle of water.
Further, when people from here travel to places like China, I expect them to educate themselves about conditions where they are going. Bargaining is legitimate sport in China, not like here. Overpaying for stuff because you have no idea about bargaining is part of the China experience ;D
That said, Chinese will someday understand about the value of standard pricing. They will learn this on their own.
this reminds me of another gf story :Dhaha!
We were caught about 3 blocks from where we needed to be, in a driving rainstorm, with no umbrella ‘:O
Couldn’t get a cab, but this guy in one of those bicycle-cabs pulls up…we dive in and gf tells him where to go…pouring rain, but we are dry 🙂
We get to our destination and he tells gf how much…she hits the ceiling!! “5 yuan!! for 3 blocks!!”…the argument proceeds, she is almost in tears…a crowd develops…
Finally, I am done with this, and give him his 5…gf stomps away, but soon laughs…
5 yuan was too much for local to pay a bicycle-cab for 3 blocks, but for the foreigner 5 yuan was about 80-cents…and we were dry…well worth it…
Foreigners shouldn’t travel if they can’t understand money exchange values and make their own value judgments about what they pay…and $1.30 for a bottle of water on a hot day is fine with us 😀
Li Na: The merchandises bought in tourist sites are expensive even for native Chinese, not specify for foreigners. Bargaining is not prevailing, no one bargains in local vegetable market, no seeing grandma level people cut down any cent in vegetable market, people are pleased at the price VS. their retired pension.
Jan Lambacher: Speaking from my own experience, I would agree with Li Na that it is not necessarily discrimination between Chinese and foreigners, but rather between locals and non-local visitors. I hear similar stories about being ripped off / overcharged when travelling in China from both Chinese and foreign friends.
Kai Liu: Don’t put many expectations on those small vendors, they are the low class, poor people. What they want is make once, not long term deals with tourists.
They may have children and sick elderly parents at home. Most of them can’t afford a apartment in Beijing and squeeze in a small underground room there.
They not only treat foreigners like that, also local tourists. If I wear like a rich man, they may ask for higher price because they think it’s nothing to me.
I usually likely to pay that money just for charity if I see old vendors or small children selling things. If they charge unreasonably high, I can turn back to a normal convenience store.
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