A Catch-up Effect Anomaly

A 'Catch-Up Effect' Anomaly:

How Do Cassette Tapes Survive in China in 2009?

Rock Valley College. Fall 2004. Macroeconomics with Professor Youngblood. The lesson: the Catch-up Effect. A lesson grounded in economics, flowing with uplifting and optimistic predictions for the potential futures of the developing countries of the world.

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Here's the lesson in summary. The lesser and least developing countries of the world have problems. Maybe the problems are health-related--malaria, AIDs, tuberculosis, etc. Maybe the problems are conflict related--war, terrorism, sanctions. Maybe the problems are money-related--deficits, government debt, inflation, etc. Maybe the problems are infrastructure-related--roads, plumbing, electricity, etc. Maybe the problems are resource-related--lack of freshwater, poor soil, uneducated labor force, etc. In most cases, such countries likely have a combination of all these problems. They are stuck in a poverty trap.

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By that point in the semester, the professor had lectured how with sound government and economic policies, such countries could escape from the poverty trap. That's uplifting, right? But then there's the catch-up effect.

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The professor explained that in it's initial stages of economic growth coming out of the poverty trap, the economic growth of developing countries is often steep and exponential. In other words, people's standards of living can increase rapidly... doubling in less than a decade... the developing countries catch-up with the developing countries like the hare spotting the tortoise in front of him.

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How? Technology! They get all the most recent and productive technology all at once.

Imagine that one surving caveman forever unaware of the modern world around him lives somewhere on this planet. He lives by hunting animals with his club. Maybe he only manages a kill once every two days. One day some NRA activists find him and show him how to use an AK47. Takes a few hours to teach him, but he gets the hang of it after awhile. Now he can get a kill every hour. Look at the growth of his productivity!!!!

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The cavemen-to-neocon line who developed separately from him developed more slowly and gradually. They innovated and adopted the arrowhead, then the arrow, then Zhuge Liang's rapid-fire crossbow, then the rifle, then the rifle that actually hits the target, then the sniper rifle, then the nuclear weapon, then the weaponized virus in Season Three of the tv show 24. These innovations happend over thousands of years... growth was slow... but this caveman instantly accessed them and his growth was NOW!

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This is something like what happens to developing countries that break out of the poverty trap. Suddenly they get cellular phones, satellite TV, mp4 players, PS3s, George Forman Grills, the Magic Bullet with EZ smoothie accessories... oh, and sliced bread. Together, these things enhance productivity tremendously... the people in the countries can do more with less time... their economy runs like the Gingerbread Man.

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Another advantage is that they eliminate a lot of waste. They have PS3s, so there are no Ataris, SNESs, Dreamcasts, or PS1s sitting around unused. They don't have to build landlines if they only need to build cell phone towers. It saves resources.

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The catch-up effect is the invisible hand's little miracle. It makes people lives better faster, and it happens all the time. Sometimes the country merely catches up. Sometimes the country catches up and then takes the lead. I think it's fair to say that colonial and infant America 'caught up' using technology initially developed in Europe--particulary England--and then took the lead in the 20th Century. And China's economic growth in the last few decades is nothing if not a model of how well the catch-up effect works. Who knows if China will catch-up or take the lead? But that's not my question. I want to know...

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Why are there cassette tapes in China in 2009?

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My memory stretches back to the late 1980s, so I remember the retirement years of the cassette tape era. I remember buying them. I remember listening to them... having to flip them over to the other side. I remember the painful rewinding and fastforwarding process. I remember those unique sounds of an aging or damaged cassette. I remember the 'piracy' technique of recording from the radio onto the cassettes... and getting barely acceptable quality audio! Cassettes, may they be forever dead...

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But they're not! China has them?! Not everywhere... in fact, in only one place that I've seen: textbooks. The Chinese textbooks come with cassette tapes. Textbooks published in 2005 and printed in 2008 come with cassette tapes! Why?!?!?!?!!??!!?

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On the one hand, the fact that China has cassette tapes is consistent with the theory of the catch-up effect. China's development really took off in the 80s--the cassette tape heyday. So we can expect there to be some remnants of the technology. But CHina should have--like the U.S. phased them out more completely. And I must reinforce that in most ways China has. You'll never find Chinese people to listening to music on cassette. And you'll be hard-pressed to find them listening to music on CDs. They all listen to digital music. So again, China's experience is mostly what we expect. The textbook w/cassette anomaly is just one small, but puzzling variation from the trend.

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So why do the textbooks come with cassettes? They were printed and released in 2008! CDs would have been cheaper, lighter, less bulky, and more convenient to transfer to digital format for increased used. Do the students even have cassette players?

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I'm going to let my mind wander over some possible explanations:

(1) cassette tapes are less easy to pirate?... and the textbook companies are concerned about piracy of their intellectual property rights? (but who would pirate textbook audio?! most of the students would be happiest if they never had to listen to the robotic voice of that British woman... I estimate less than 1% listen to the audio outside of class... no market for piracy!)

(2) the textbook company is concerned that some poor students don't have CD or mp3 players? (but I'd be concerned about the rich and middle-income students who don't have cassette players)

(3) the textbook company is concerned about poor, rural classrooms that don't have and can't afford CD players? (but CD players can't be more expensive than cassette players... when the cassette player breaks, the school will likely have to pay even more money to find and purchase this defunct technology. CD players are cheap!)

(4) the textbook writers are a bunch of dinosaurs who still live in 1987? (but how then do these dinosaurs manage to have 'hip' topics like "Book 7, Unit 3: Safe Sex"... yeah, the students learned English words about how to have sex safely)

(5) textbooks have always come with cassette tapes, and so they always must?

(6) the textbook company wants to give me something to blog about

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Seriously, I really want to know... why do the Shaanxi Senior High School English textbooks published in 2005 and printed in 2008 come with cassettes? Is there an explanation that I am missing?