In August 1887, the British Parliament passed an insulting trade mark law clause that specifically stipulated that goods imported from Germany must be labelled "Made in Germany" in order to distinguish between inferior German goods and high-quality British goods.

Putting down the newspaper in his hand, Ernst felt a little emotional, some things will not change because of the chaos in East Africa, such as the latest "Trade Mark Law" in the United Kingdom.

In general, the UK's revision of the trademark law is still under pressure due to the rapid improvement of the industrial strength of Germany and other countries, and it is the pressure of advanced countries to suppress late-developing countries.

Even if it is replaced by other countries, as long as it poses a threat to Britain, it will enjoy the same treatment as Germany now, so this is an inevitable trend in history, unless there is a stupid prime minister in Britain who lobbied the parliament to let Germany go.

This situation is almost impossible to happen, after all, the British are notoriously stable now, unless there is a wave of "anti-intellectual" in the whole society, as in the previous life, and then kidnapping these politicians through the "democratic system", "falsehood" is not prevalent in British society now.

Returning to the impact of the provisions of the bill, let's not talk about the emotional damage caused to the Germans by this kind of straightforward humiliation, but East Africa, as a "copycat power", did feel the cold wind.

After all, many goods in East Africa are said to be German copycats, and for the UK, East African industrial products are copycats of cottages.

For the formulation of standardization, the Heixingen Consortium and the East African state-owned enterprises should be looked at separately, and most of the enterprises under the Heixingen Consortium are innovative enterprises and attach importance to product quality.

The state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which are the pillars of the national economy in East Africa, are very deficient in this regard, especially the "copycats" of Germany, a "copycat country".

There is no way to do this, the construction of the industrial system in East Africa began in the 70s, and basically imported a full set of industrial machinery from Germany and Austria from scratch, so it was inevitable to embark on this road.

The process of industry from scratch is the same as the fact that the victims are hungry during the famine.

Therefore, now that Britain is cracking down on "German goods", it is actually indirectly attacking "East African goods", and Germany's technology is changing rapidly, so East Africa may suffer greater losses than Germany.

"What the British said is not good, but what they say is basically the truth, for Germany's large and small enterprises and the German government, this is a very shameful political and economic event, which has had an extremely bad impact on the country's image, and it also marks a new stage in the competition between the two countries for the commodity market, and we can even consider this incident as the beginning of the transfer of the world's factories." Ernst said to officials in the industrial sector.

Don't look at the negative effects of this "insult", in fact, it also represents Britain's "helpless" recognition of German industrial competition, which is a manifestation of being forced to be in a hurry.

Since Britain led the first industrial revolution, Britain is still the "factory of the world" today, but now British competitors have emerged, including Germany, the United States, France...... The rise of a number of industrial countries posed a great threat to British industry and commerce, and Germany was the "first bird" that the British wanted to beat.

Aside from the quality, German goods are indeed cheap, and Germany's industrial production capacity has been greatly improved, and the shipment volume is also large, plus "plagiarism", "OEM" and other means, in the appearance can be achieved one-to-one restoration of the "genuine product".

So when the British bought the "domestic product", and then used it to reveal the stuffing, and "scolded the mother" at home, Ernst could have imagined it.

"Our export enterprises are essentially part of the German commodity export trade system, so they will inevitably be affected by this incident, which is a good warning for us, and the domestic standardization of commodity quality should also be put back on the agenda to change the stereotype of the international community on our products!"

Ernst attached great importance to standardization, but East Africa was unable to promote this kind of thing before, after all, the machines were imported from Europe, so they could only do things according to other people's rules, and the talent reserves of East Africa at that time obviously could not promote East African industry to the road of independent innovation.

At present, East Africa does not have this ability completely, but East Africa should have enough reserves in basic technical personnel, on the one hand, international students returning to China, and on the other hand, the number of secondary school students has surged.

However, there is a big difference between theoretical study and actual practice, and I am afraid that there is still a "setback" to go for the younger generation to directly start transforming the industrial system in East Africa.

"It should not be difficult for the government and enterprises to set up relevant standard-setting bodies according to the current situation in East Africa, especially on the basis of the original commodity classification, to evaluate the East African commodity standards."

Prior to this, East Africa did establish commodity grading at the primary enterprise level, but this commodity grading was based on sacrificing national products.

In order to compete with the international market, we can only select those products with excellent quality and sell them in the international market, and leave the defective products for domestic digestion.

However, for the people of East Africa, there is still a feeling that the supply exceeds the demand, which has a lot to do with the production capacity, East Africa is not an industrial country now, in addition to the low urbanization rate, the number of industries is also a big problem.

In the early 19th century, the standard of industrial countries should be more than 30% of the population urbanized, but until now, the level of urbanization in East Africa is less than 20% (including the black population).

Moreover, many cities in East Africa should be considered agro-industrial mixed settlements, especially in the west and north, and many cities are only administrative, not industrialized.

At present, it is recognized that only Britain, France, Germany and the United States have completed industrialization, and the rest such as Austria-Hungary, Tsarist Russia, Spain, East Africa, Japan and others are catching up.

Of course, East Africa is the most rapidly developing in several industrial sectors, mainly steel, electricity and automobiles, and food processing.

The negative example is the weak development of the textile industry and machinery manufacturing, which East Africa needs to import from the Far East and Germany every year.

"To formulate a standardization body, it is necessary to discuss and communicate with the royal enterprises and several large foreign-funded enterprises, and they have rich experience in this area."

Imperial enterprises and large foreign-funded enterprises plus the Heixingen Bank, that is, the Heixinggen Foundation, which was the earliest organization to formulate commodity standards.

This is related to the industry engaged in by the Hexingen Foundation, such as East African state-owned enterprises that do not meet the conditions of the Hexingen Foundation, but it is also more standard than many small business workshops in Europe and the United States.

However, there are many local government-run enterprises in East Africa, and the quality of these enterprises varies from one to the other, but in addition to the textile industry and the food processing industry, they are the backbone of the light industry sector in East Africa.

"Led by the Ministry of Industry, and supervised and guided by other foreign-funded enterprises in East Africa, an organization will be established to guide the quality of commodity production in East Africa, which will be named the East African Standardization Association."

The East African Association for Standardization is actually a copy of the previous German Association for Standardization, which was not founded until 1917.

The difference between what started as a civil society organization and was later co-opted by the German government, and East Africa, which was directly promoted by the state.

(End of chapter)