Is China’s Toner Cloner Industry a Cartel? Even a Mafia?!
As Cloners gather For another well-rehearsed Chinese event, Some of us in the rest of world see these companies as cartels and mafias.
Another gala, another lavish event located in Shenzhen China, with all the usual toner cloner suspects happily sharing their global conquests at the expense of so many others. Are they too high on their pedestal? or is this fair in business, love and war? have we in the West lost the battle? or is the future slowly shaping the industry in ways that no one can control? These are the questions running throughout many people’s minds in the toner print industry ever since the Chinese came to town and conquered the industry this past decade with what we now know as ‘counterfeit clone toner’. In their latest lavish event they are whining about competition among each other. And that leaves us again wondering why is no one in the West is celebrating China’s latest toner sales conquest in the US or the EU? And that’s because there is just not that much to brag about since China’s counterfeit clone toner industry now ads up to a $7B+ yearly loss by the OEM’s and by the rest of the industry that is struggling to stay afloat, and that’s also why HP just sold it’s Chinese printer plant to Foxconn this past week, HP want out of there in a hurry.
China Toner Cloners now over produce tens of millions of HP Toners (and other brands) every month, they control the flow of aftermarket toner chips through Ninestar’s Apex, and they even bought out news agencies like ‘China Charley’s’ Action-intell.com and Enxmag.com in the U.S. and Therecycler.com and Sforp.ru in Europe (with the exception of Tonernews.com). So now Words like ‘Cartel’ and ‘Mafia’ are being thrown out there by many and understandingly so, since the rest of us are definitely not partying like our Chinese counterparts. It’s true that China manufactures most of the world’s good and the rest of the world is trying to catch-up, but the Chinese in our industry are well known cheaters and abusers that lack the moral high grounds that most of us are known to share in our daily business ventures. In the Chinese government’s latest conquest (read), they are now sidestepping trade barriers by buying up factories overseas with printed money that has no validity to its currency.
A CARTEL?
Maybe for the Chinese in our industry success is a double edge sword, and if they had been more honorable from the start and would stop constantly cheating, we would not be at this tipping point where some of us now consider them a cartel or even a mafia.
