# How Are Chinese Sellers Able to Sell Things So Cheaply? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 19, 2016, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170 "2016-05-19T15:54:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170/21 "2016-05-19T21:20:45Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > Well technically, it’s going to be our wall, but you are going to pay for it. It’s already built! You can see it FROM SPACE, and it can be yours for a very low price! ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170/22 "2016-05-19T21:28:52Z")
> [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](#): > > Shipping is a very small cost, thanks to container vessels. > > ‘Planet Money’ made tshirts and reported on the experience. > > Although there were multiple shipping steps in the manufacture, the costs for shipping to make the shirts and bring them to America was only about 10 cents (on a $12.42 shirt). > > OTOH, the “order fulfillment” was $1.79 and the “shipping and handling” (that is, the part done in the US to get the shirt to your door) was $2.26. These were both “in the US” costs, and they were the two single highest cost conributers, adding up to about 1/3 the total costs. > > [Episode 503: Adding Up The Cost Of The Planet Money T-Shirt : Planet Money : NPR](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/12/13/250747279/episode-503-adding-up-the-cost-of-the-planet-money-t-shirt) A number of astonishingly cheap bits you can order on the internet are individually shipped, in a single padded mailer, direct from China. Often with a hand-written label and IIRC a custom’s form stating that the item is a “sample”. There’s no savings from containerized shipping or bulk handling there. ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170/23 "2016-05-19T22:04:14Z")
> [@Chihuahua](#): > > China is a notorious hub for stolen and counterfeited goods. > … > Second, ask whether it is black market or counterfeit. There is a black market for stolen & counterfeited small metal shoehorns? Who’d thunk that!!! :dubious: > [@](#): > > Chinese factories often manufacture more units than necessary, and after the customer’s production run is complete they keep the “extras” to sell at lower price. Wowsers! You really would have thought some entrepreneurial western industrialist might have picked that idea up some time in the past couple of centuries, but it’s a Chinese innovation you say? Come to think of it, when I go to my local liquor retailer for a couple of bottles of wine they often have heavily discounted stuff called clean skins and bin ends. You think that maybe the Australian wine trade might be the first westerners to adopt this NEAsian practice? You should write a management book about this, it’s revolutionary, a sure fire winner. ---
**Author:** ![Doughbag](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Doughbag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doughbag)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170/24 "2016-05-19T23:14:31Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > It’s the cost of shipping that baffles me. I’ve ordered cheap one off stuff from China and recieved it in a couple of weeks at prices that just seem crazy small. I could see getting a deal on a box of 100 USB cables, but one? Your standard [microUSB cable](http://www.harveynorman.ie/computing/apple/apple-accessories/cables-and-adaptors/belkin-mixit-micro-usb-cable-2m.html) costs wholesale here in Ireland anything from €0.70 to €2.80 though my regular wholesale suppliers, these retail here at around €8-15 per cable. If I buy them directly from the manufacturer, they cost about €0.20-€1.00 - but I would have to buy something like 1000+ items. However, don’t think the same ratio applies with all electronic gear, some €100 items barely make €10 profit. If your Chinese manufacturer can sell them for that cheap though the normal channels, they make a good margin on selling those items at €2.00 directly to the end-customer. Just bare in mind, with many of these items you buy on ebay and sorts, there is no come back. The item may be the same you buy in a retail store, but it could also be a cheaply produced inferior product. ---
**Author:** ![Doughbag](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Doughbag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doughbag)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170/25 "2016-05-19T23:19:09Z")
> [@joemama24\_98](#): > > Right - shows you how different the currency values are and what a dollar can buy in the rest of the world. Make that parts of the world - your $ buys less in Ireland than the USA. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170/26 "2016-05-20T00:34:55Z")
> [@penultima\_thule](#): > > There is a black market for stolen & counterfeited small metal shoehorns? > Who’d thunk that!!! :dubious: I bought a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine DVD from China that I suspect is bootleg from the packaging. I bought a [key smart](http://www.getkeysmart.com/). A very convenient key keeper. “Patent Pending”. The Chinese are selling copies at a lower price. ---
**Author:** ![urban1a](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47c2d/32.png) [@urban1a](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/urban1a)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170/27 "2016-05-20T01:07:05Z")
> [@joemama24\_98](#): > > Right - shows you how different the currency values are and what a dollar can buy in the rest of the world. > > I am curious if anyone has purchased direct from [Alibaba.com](http://Alibaba.com) (the vendors listed there). Using Google image search, I can often find a product from a US retailer on there (likely coming from the same supplier) at huge, huge discounts (jewellry is a great example). I’ve been reluctant to pull the trigger for fear of never receiving the product and not having much recourse, but my understanding is the are the Amazon of Asia and should be fine. Yahoo has heavily invested in Alibaba (and that may be the only valuable thing left in the company). I have not ordered from there, but I have bought from Aliexpress. I don’t know what the relationship between the two is, but [Aliexpress](http://aliexpress.com) is the Amazon of China (selling single lot items). Alibaba sells mainly to industrial companies, I believe, in very large lots. I have also purchases several pairs of glasses from Zenni Optical for extremely low prices. Single vision glasses, with frames, are often under $20.00. Shipping can be a bit long, but usually I get them within 2 weeks. Bob ---
**Author:** ![urban1a](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47c2d/32.png) [@urban1a](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/urban1a)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170/28 "2016-05-20T01:08:40Z")
> [@joemama24\_98](#): > > Right - shows you how different the currency values are and what a dollar can buy in the rest of the world. > > I am curious if anyone has purchased direct from [Alibaba.com](http://Alibaba.com) (the vendors listed there). Using Google image search, I can often find a product from a US retailer on there (likely coming from the same supplier) at huge, huge discounts (jewellry is a great example). I’ve been reluctant to pull the trigger for fear of never receiving the product and not having much recourse, but my understanding is the are the Amazon of Asia and should be fine. Yahoo has heavily invested in Alibaba (and that may be the only valuable thing left in the company). I have not ordered from there, but I have bought from Aliexpress. I don’t know what the relationship between the two is, but [Aliexpress](http://aliexpress.com) is the Amazon. Alibaba sells mainly to industrial companies, I believe, in very large lots. I have also purchases several pairs of glasses from Zenni Optical for extremely low prices. Single vision glasses, with frames, are often under $20.00. Shipping can be a bit long, but usually I get them withing 2 weeks. Bob ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170/29 "2016-05-20T01:35:41Z")
> [@naita](#): > > International agreements on postage were created in a way that maked sure third world countries weren’t disadvantaged. Say you’re sending a letter from a country where most people make a small fraction of even a minimum wage US employee. If the USPS demanded that country’s postal service paid them US level postage for letters transferred it would be too costly for the average inhabitant to send a letter to the US. That seems unreasonable, and it wasn’t too costly for first world countries to say “Hey, we’re gonna subsidize letters from your countries to ours, and maybe small packages as well.” There wasn’t supposed to be any subsidy involved. The basic deal was put together by the International Postal Union in the late nineteenth century, based on the idea that, typically, each letter generates a reply. So, I write a letter in France, addressed to you in Italy. The French post office gets the postage, natch, and they deliver the letter to the Italian post office, who then deliver it to you for no money. Why would they do that? Because they expect that you will write a reply, and they will get the postage from that, send the letter to France, and the French post office will do the rest at no charge. Each post office does very well on the letter that they get paid for, since assembling the mail to (say) France and delivering it in bulk to the French post office is not an expensive thing to do. (It’s individual delivery to the recipient’s door that costs.) And they do badly on the letter that they have to deliver. But, it all evens out, and there is no cross-subsidy involved. Where the system breaks down is where there is no letter-reply symmetry. I write a single letter to the New Yorker saying “I’d like to subscribe to your magazine for a year, please” and this generates 52 replies. My post office is not best pleased at this. And matters are even worse if I subscribe by phone, or online, since then my post office gets no revenue at all. So then they introduced a system of compensatory payments between national posts offices, based on the disparity in the weight of mail moving in each direction. These are agreed bilaterally. I don’t know whether there is such a bilateral agreement between the US and China. If there is, Chinese postage rates for parcels and packages to the US should logically go up. Unless, of course, the Chinese authorities decide simply to absorb this cost and not pass it on through increased postage charges, as a form of subsidy to export businesses. But that would be a subsidy from the Chinese government, not from the US. ---
**Author:** ![Chihuahua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dec6dc/32.png) [@Chihuahua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chihuahua)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170/30 "2016-05-20T01:41:54Z")
> [@penultima\_thule](#): > > There is a black market for stolen & counterfeited small metal shoehorns? > Who’d thunk that!!! :dubious: > > Wowsers! You really would have thought some entrepreneurial western industrialist might have picked that idea up some time in the past couple of centuries, but it’s a Chinese innovation you say? > > Come to think of it, when I go to my local liquor retailer for a couple of bottles of wine they often have heavily discounted stuff called clean skins and bin ends. You think that maybe the Australian wine trade might be the first westerners to adopt this NEAsian practice? > > You should write a management book about this, it’s revolutionary, a sure fire winner. I don’t understand why you feel the need to be sarcastic. I gave a factual and well documented answer to the question. I never claimed these practices were exclusively Chinese or that they were not practiced in other industries. In fact, I have seen many cases of legal rights in which a Chinese company contracted to manufacture merchandise made extras outside of the contracted production run and then out competed the legitimate owners. I understand that metal shoehorns is a very basic example, but imagine what would happen if the iPhone factories started selling iPhones independently and drove Apple out of business. This is precisely what happens in some industries, and it is a factual answer to the question of why some Chinese goods are sold extremely cheap, Your attitude is unecessary. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170/31 "2016-05-20T01:52:22Z")
> [@penultima\_thule](#): > > There is a black market for stolen & counterfeited small metal shoehorns? > Who’d thunk that!!! :dubious: > > Wowsers! You really would have thought some entrepreneurial western industrialist might have picked that idea up some time in the past couple of centuries, but it’s a Chinese innovation you say? > > Come to think of it, when I go to my local liquor retailer for a couple of bottles of wine they often have heavily discounted stuff called clean skins and bin ends. You think that maybe the Australian wine trade might be the first westerners to adopt this NEAsian practice? > > You should write a management book about this, it’s revolutionary, a sure fire winner. **Moderator Note** **penultima thule** , I don’t know why you feel the need to be so snarky, but this is not appropriate in this forum. If you can’t make a factual response, then don’t bother replying. No warning issued, but don’t do this again. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170/32 "2016-05-20T02:13:26Z")
> [@Chihuahua](#): > > imagine what would happen if the iPhone factories started selling iPhones independently and drove Apple out of business. That is an interesting point. The glass cover of the i-phone is manufactured in China, because Jobs wouldn’t wait for an American company to tool up. Where are the electronics made, and the software written? ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170/33 "2016-05-20T10:14:11Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > I think we can pretty much count China as part of the developed world now. It’s the second largest economy in the world and probably heading for first place quite soon. It’s about [more](http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators) than just money, though. ---
**Author:** ![Chihuahua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dec6dc/32.png) [@Chihuahua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chihuahua)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170/34 "2016-05-20T11:15:29Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > That is an interesting point. The glass cover of the i-phone is manufactured in China, because Jobs wouldn’t wait for an American company to tool up. > Where are the electronics made, and the software written? I don’t know the specifics of the iPhone, but that is just a hypothetical example. I know people who struggle to do business in China because it is hard for them to find reputable manufacturers. I can point out some examples of stolen IPs or copyrighted materials being produced for cheap in China. If the same thing happened in the US, the rightful owners would sue them out of existence. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-chinese-sellers-able-to-sell-things-so-cheaply/755170.md?page=1)