New iPhones every year, but old scalpers every year: China's shameless buyers

New iPhones every year, but scalpers every year. Yesterday, I saw this video of a Chinese scalper lady that was widely circulated on American media websites, and I felt a bit complicated and bitter. As a reporter who has been covering the iPhone launch in New York for the past three consecutive years, I would like to talk about my own views on Chinese scalpers. The scalpers mentioned in this article refer to those people who line up outside Apple stores overnight to buy the products, as seen in media reports, rather than the dealers who collect the products in several snakeskin bags not far away and then ship them back to China to make a fortune.

Chinese scalpers sweeping the US

Every year in mid-September, I would go to Fifth Avenue in New York to report on the launch of Apple's new iPhone. This is the busiest area in New York and Apple's flagship store in the United States. The long queues here every year would attract dozens of well-known global and local media reports.

Early queuing to buy the iPhone is a social phenomenon triggered by Apple. This is not only the case in the United States, but also in Paris in Europe, Japan in Asia, and even Beijing and Hong Kong in China, in the global metropolises with Apple stores, a large number of crazy Apple fans are willing to endure the wind and rain all night or even several days to get the latest iPhone as soon as possible.

This kind of infatuation with Apple products is not discussed for now. But in recent years, this originally simple queuing phenomenon has become more and more distorted. In fact, the real Apple fans should also be technology experts and the main force of online shopping. If you want to use the mobile phone on the first day, you can make an online reservation as soon as possible, and then receive the mobile phone on the day of release.

Nowadays, queuing at Apple stores has become the exclusive domain of advertisers and scalpers. Due to the media's focus on coverage, people who want to get free advertising will choose to camp in front of the store a week or even weeks in advance, wearing clothes printed with their own product or sponsor's logo, and accepting interviews from various media. Sponsors only need to pay less than $1,000 per person to get media exposure that cannot be obtained even with hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising fees.

Those who lined up weeks in advance were basically those who wanted to take advantage of the car advertisements, while another group of people began to gather in large numbers the day before the sale. They usually did not want to be interviewed by the media, and they always lowered their heads to avoid the camera of reporters. Most of them were Chinese, and many were middle-aged, speaking various Chinese dialects, with Chinese characters printed on their pockets.

Yes, they are the "suspected Chinese scalpers". The reason why I say suspected is that when you ask them, they either turn their heads away or say they are buying the machine for themselves or their relatives. But at least from the outside, these people don't look like technology enthusiasts. The media also often photographed such scenes: after buying the machine, they would directly hand it over to someone carrying a snakeskin bag not far away, counting the money in one hand and handing over the machine in the other.

This is not only the case in the New York Apple Store. In Apple Stores in major cities with large Chinese populations such as Boston and San Francisco, you can see a large number of Chinese scalpers queuing up to buy iPhones. It’s just that the queue time may be longer or shorter, and it doesn’t attract as much media coverage as in New York.

Legal but undignified labor

That's right, Chinese scalpers have become a hot topic in the US media in recent years, and even the term "Chinese Mafia" was used. The tone of the report was contemptuous, which reminded people of the discriminatory stance of China's locust plague. Every time I see such reports in various newspapers, websites and TV stations, I always have a complicated and strange feeling.

It should be pointed out that the "Chinese" scalpers mentioned by the American media do not refer to nationality, but to Chinese descent. The scalpers lining up outside the Apple store are mostly Chinese descent or new immigrants living in the United States. Considering the cost of travel and visa issues, no one will fly from China to the United States to line up; those who come from far away in China also buy machines outside the store and ship them back to China for profit.

Is it illegal for scalpers to resell mobile phones? At least in American law, it is difficult to convict such behavior. These people buy mobile phones according to the limit of two per person, and then voluntarily sell them to another group of people. As for those who buy a large number of iPhones and resell them to China, whether their behavior is legal is a question of Chinese law.

It is completely understandable that people sell their physical labor to queue up and buy and sell phones for a certain amount of compensation. They can earn hundreds of dollars in a day of queuing, which is quite attractive even in New York. Moreover, many people in the queue do not have the ability to work decently in the United States. They can only do intermittent physical work such as restaurant handymen, and they can't even earn $100 a day.

But this is a legal but dishonorable behavior. Because of the concentrated purchases by Chinese scalpers, people who actually go to physical stores to buy iPhones are full of resentment. This situation also occurred on the first day of the release of the first two generations of iPads, when Chinese scalpers quickly swept away all the iPads in Apple stores with woven bags. In addition, some Chinese scalpers who lined up outside Apple stores overnight would leave a lot of garbage, which also caused a lot of dissatisfaction among local residents.

In recent years, there have been many reports of Chinese scalpers clashing with American police and even being violently arrested. I have also reported such incidents. However, the reason these people were arrested was not because of scalping, but mostly because of conflicts during the queue; or because of language barriers, they did not follow the police's orders; there were even some who resisted arrest due to poor communication and were violently resisted by American police.

I once reported a typical example of this: "Chinese American woman was shocked by police when buying an iPhone at an Apple store in the United States." In fact, many Chinese American residents do not speak English well, especially older immigrants. What's more frightening is that they still respond to American police according to their domestic habits.

Strong domestic demand is the root cause

Why are most of the people queuing up in New York and other places Chinese scalpers? The reason is simple. Only by reselling to China can they make a profit. In addition, New York City has a large number of Chinese residents, especially in Chinatown and Flushing, where there are enough Chinese to form a large army of scalpers.

Except for last year's iPhone 5s, the launch time of new iPhones in China is always weeks or even months later than the first launch regions such as the United States and Hong Kong, China. Moreover, there are a large number of wealthy people in China who are willing to pay a high price to get the mobile phone as soon as possible to try it out and show off. When the iPhone 6 was first launched, the domestic price was even speculated to be more than 20,000 yuan. In addition, even if it is sold in China, the price of iPhone in the United States is more than 1,000 yuan lower than that in China, so scalpers have enough profit margins to resell it. (Note: The price difference between the two countries is largely due to value-added tax.)

If selling to Latin America or Africa can also make high profits, then there will be a large number of blacks or Latinos queuing up in New York to resell, if they are diligent enough. At least the Chinese scalpers in the queue are still selling physical labor, and there are many middle-aged women and even elderly people among them. At least they are much better than the blacks who are physically strong but lazy and beg on the streets and commit various crimes. (Suspected racial discrimination? The crime rate of Chinese in the United States is significantly lower than that of blacks and Latinos, and most of the beggars on the streets are black. This is a fact.)

China has a strong market demand, but cannot get sufficient supply, and cannot even buy the machine in time. This is the fundamental reason for the rampant Chinese scalpers in American Apple stores. The rapid growth of China's economy has increased people's income level. Chinese tycoons have become the gods of wealth in global luxury stores. Many luxury stores in the United States are equipped with fluent Chinese shopping guides. They are also able to pay a premium to get the machine in time and show it off.

There is actually not much moral height in criticizing the Chinese scalpers who line up in the United States. If these Chinese scalpers had not lined up to buy, the wealthy in China would not have been able to get the machine in the first place, and ordinary consumers would not have been able to buy the parallel-imported iPhones from the United States. If domestic readers want to criticize these Chinese scalpers in New York, at least they should not buy parallel-imported iPhones themselves to be justified. Moreover, these scalpers who line up to resell do not control the domestic iPhones, but the supply that belongs to American consumers.

No one is forcing the local tycoons to pay sky-high prices to buy iPhones that have not yet been launched in China. In my opinion, although domestic Android phones are indeed inferior to Apple in terms of operating system and ecological platform, the hardware design of domestic Android phones is close to that of iPhones that cost twice as much. Being willing to pay sky-high prices for iPhones is a two-way street.

In fact, many Chinese residents who travel to the United States for business or tourism also want to buy two iPhones and resell them back home. Even among the highly educated Chinese students studying in the United States, many of them will queue up in a civilized manner or place large orders online to buy iPhones, hoping to earn some living expenses by reselling them.

The voice of Chinese scalpers waiting in line

The imbalance between supply and demand is the reason why Chinese scalpers buy up so many products. Apart from those who resell the products to the domestic market for huge profits, the Chinese scalpers who line up outside the Apple store only get a small amount of hard work fee. Many of them are poorly dressed and have to endure sleepless nights under the autumn wind and rain. Most of them are low-income earners, and queuing up to buy products is selling physical labor and earning legal but undignified wages.

They also endured the contempt of Apple store employees and the American media, as well as the sarcasm from domestic netizens. Of course, they also have the freedom to choose not to earn this money. These low-income middle-aged uncles and aunts can also work hard as handymen in Chinese restaurants, and engage in physical labor such as shipping and express delivery. It is also their own choice to queue up to buy iPhones and earn a few hundred dollars, and suffer many cold stares from the United States and China.

But these scalpers have their own ideas. This year, outside the Apple store on Fifth Avenue, a Chinese scalper's words may represent their thoughts. He is a manual laborer in New York, wearing an outdated and not very clean coat, and his slightly gray hair is slightly greasy. He uses an iPhone 4 from four years ago. Yes, many scalpers in the queue cannot afford the new iPhone, and even use feature phones.

According to his description and that of the scalpers around him, he arrived at the Fifth Avenue Apple store a day and a half in advance to line up, and the folding chair he brought was picked up by the plainclothes security guards hired by the Apple store, but those security guards turned a blind eye to the long reclining chairs of those who were queuing up in front of him to advertise. When he left to go to the bathroom, he tied the folding chair to the scaffolding with a chain lock, and when he came back, he found that the Apple store security guards were cutting his lock with pliers and trying to throw away his chair.

The middle-aged man, who looked unpresentable, showed me the pliers mark on the chain lock and said indignantly, "You can take a picture of the lock, but don't take a picture of me. Apple is a hyped brand. I'm just an employee, I do whatever makes money, and it's not illegal. But I also hope that one day China will have its own Apple brand so that I can earn this money without waiting in line."

I would like to share this with many domestic mobile phone manufacturers and domestic mobile phone users.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.