Subsidized air transport? Registered slower than unregistered?

Off-topic Chatter
1

http://www.sourcingmap.com/faq.php?category=Shipping%20and%20Delivery

First time I've seen "subsidized air transport". So all this "free shipping" is by subsidy from the Chinese government?

Also first time I've seen the claim that registered mail is slower (two times slower) than unregistered mail.

Interesting.

2

I can get into this a lot deeper but suffice to say that the cost to ship any given carton/container of anything depends on a multitude of factors, few of which have anything to do with the official rate charts. It has to do with "who you know" and who you slip a few Yuan to under the table (in addition to the fact that the government does indeed "tolerate" some hanky-panky because they want to encourage exports.

I can get into this a lot deeper but suffice to say that the cost to ship any given carton/container of anything depends on a multitude of factors, few of which have anything to do with the official rate charts. It has to do with "who you know" and who you slip a few Yuan to under the table (in addition to the fact that the government does indeed "tolerate" some hanky-panky because they want to encourage exports.)

It was a long time ago but I personally went into a Central Shanghai Post Office to ship a package of souvenirs and I ended up in a “very friendly” negotiation with the clerks and a manager during which the price for shipping came down about 70% for that single box. I simply had to show some respect, gesture a lot (but nicely), point to the rate charts on the wall (pretending I knew a lot more than I could decipher, and smile a lot. My son can speak Chinese now but we were on a sign language only basis during that first trip. Keep in mind that government paid clerks are not (for the most part) experiencing the economic benefits of China’s growth. It may be a little different now but my son has been back many, many times since (including a roughly continuous 4 year stint) and he assures me that practically every thing is up for negotiation - even (and particularly) government run institutions.

We have a lot of interesting and amusing stories to tell but, ironically, the members of this BLF group probably know a whole lot more from their own experience than many so-called experts do about how things actually “work” in China.