apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Actually, I heard a ton of "Never buy produce from California again," at the time. Advice which is only slightly less practical than "Don't buy consumer products from China."

I used to work for a manufacturer who produced all their goods in China. Having seen how much things really cost in production (cheap) and the working conditions the chinese labor force has to endure......my viewpoint has completely changed. I used to just buy, buy buy,"it's only $5", but now I buy less and look for things that are hand crafted or made locally and spend the $25 more. If that is not an option, I have committed myself to buy things on sale as to not contribute to the huge margins being made by the retailers and manufacturers. The only way to change minds in that industry is to make it less profitable for them.

I stocked my entire kitchen through Amazon's kitchen department during their $25 off and their 4 for 3 promotions and most of the goods by Oxo and the other popular brands are made in China and for someone who has made do with the most rudimentary of equipment for years, I have to say all those little gadgets are fabulous and yes, I do use them almost everyday. I have a silicone colander that I especially love but when I heard about the Yangtze dolphin disappearing, I knew that it was because of the garbage from making these products. I haven't had a quality problem yet with all of these Chinese made goods but when I read the Amazon reviews, people praise the American brand not the country of origin. I didn't climb onto the blame China bandwagon because I owned so many year old products that have been wonderful and because I was actively aware that they were made in China.

Meg B. makes good points.

China is a developing country that has come very far very fast through hard work and determination. But their manufacturing sector is rudimentary, and there next to no environmental, labour and health & safety regulations, and similarly absent Chinese regulatory and inspection authorities. But manufacturers who trade with China know this, and so are, like Mattel, guilty if they do not undertake (and pay for) their own inspectors. And consumers who demand low prices are complicit in all of this. (read this commentary -- the heart of the AT philosophy, no? http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_mallick/20070820.html )

However, lets not forget the melamine in pet food, the glycerine in cough syrup (which killed hundreds if not thousands of people in other developing countries) and toothpaste, the fake baby formula, and so on. Shining a light on these issues so that the Chinese regulatory system is brought up to international standards is not xenophobic.

I agree with monika1, discussing the issues regarding the lack of regulation for Chinese products is not xenophobic. I have many issues with the environmental damage, horrible employee abuse, and international patent/copyrights violations that seem to be a by-product to globalization. While China isn't the only country with this problem, it is certainly one of the major ones. I would love to see regulation that will benefit our citizens but more importantly benefit the people of China. I am not sure why someone would feel this is xenophobic of me?

Certainly I think China's regulatory practices should be questioned and changed, and god knows, having lived in China for a while, there are all kinds of horrible things in their products. But the reference to the xenophobia just stems from my impression (not on AT comments, but on various other blogs and websites) that people seemed to be focusing the blame SOLELY on China, as if the problem didn't have something to do with Mattel and/or the general business practices of American companies (squeezing their Chinese producers so that in order to squeak ahead by a few cents, Chinese companies have no choice but to search for cheaper and more dubious materials). In my original email to AT, I also pointed out a story in the NYTimes from a few months ago about a factory owner in China whose business was utterly decimated over the lead paint claims. This was no evil sweatshop owner; by all accounts the man was upright and honest, and had devoted his life to his work and his employees. After he closed his business (making sure all his workers were paid fairly first), he then committed suicide in his factory. If Mattel had come forward sooner with its admission, perhaps things would have turned out differently for him.

Anyway, I am absolutely not saying that anyone who questions China is xenophobic. I was merely trying to point out that the view of globalization from China's side is a lot murkier and more complicated than we see from this side of the Pacific.

Heh. I used to work for a company that was outsourcing stuff to China. Having known the conditions that the Chinese workers had to endure BEFORE they got the manufacturing jobs and having seen the huge improvement AFTERWARD, I think it's quite harmful to scream "DON'T SUPPORT SWEATSHOPS!" or whatever. The reason that they can pay $.50 an hour is because these folks are immigrating from the countryside where they could earn $.15 per hour and had no access to hot and cold running water. Remember: Most of the people who are coming to work in these factories are traveling hundreds of miles to do so. Because it's that much better!

That being said, half our family is Chinese, and I get armloads of stuff from China meant for the domestic market every year. Yes, Chinese manufacturing standards are, on average, pretty much as low as the owners think they can get away with (with enough bribes for to the right people, of course.) Yes, we get a lot of crap shoveled off on the US. But just about anything that is sent to the US is a full order of magnitude higher quality in every way than the "top of the bottom" level of stuff produced for domestic consumption.

I have three words for why this is the case: "communism" and "shame culture". Franm shows how little she grasps Chinese culture with her statement "If Mattel had come forward sooner with its admission, perhaps things would have turned out differently for him." Uh. Yeah. Right. That would not have changed the shame that he experienced as a result of his bankruptcy--the fall in social status and the loss of face that resulted NOT from the fact that there was lead in the paint BUT from the fact that he was exposed as the source. What Mattel said about it was fairly irrelevant unless they reimbursed him because they omitted to mention that the paint shouldn't be poisoning kids. If he were still financially ruined, that would have resulted in a huge amount of lost face. She's muddling Western culture and motivations with Eastern ones, and they just aren't compatible. If he had been deliberately buying stuff with lead paint, he still would have acted in the exact same way.

BTW, Mattel? They aren't stupid. They've probably got a lot of Chinese companies running scared, and they needed to say something to reassure them. Such a public statement could avert the feeling that all Chinese companies were shamed through this debacle and would encourage others to go into business with Mattel to replace the suppliers they've lost. Their statement is, essentially, meaningless outside of its business/political context.

But I can tell you RIGHT NOW what globalization means to China. When my DH moved to the US in 1985, his mother's life savings amounted to $20 in US currency. He'd never had hot running water. He'd never seen an entire two-liter bottle of Coke and couldn't imagine anyone being so rich as to be able to buy so much at once. When he was born, *everyone* in my MIL's family saved up their ration tickets so that she could eat an entire apple a day because she was nursing to keep the baby strong. And, yes, it too *everyone's* tickets to make sure she got one a day, and that meant calling in favors of distant relatives, too. Very, very few people had refrigerators. Even fewer had heat that wasn't provided by electric blankets or a brazier. And my MIL's family had been very rich before Mao and both they and my FIL's family were very well educated, so they were still better off than average. The sheer level of scarcity can hardly be comprehended by an American of that age.

Today, all the relatives in China have DVD players and microwaves. Many have cars. DH's Gugu (father's sister) is able to retire to the US on her teaching pension--something unthinkable 20 years before.

It would be extremely difficult to find a Chinese person who thinks that things were better in China when it was much less permeable to Japan and the West. Chances are, the only people you find would be crotchety old fogies who protest that "kids used to be respectful in the old days!" (which translates to "they used to be the slaves of their parents for life and we could beat our daughters-in-law with impunity").

So before getting all wound up about the "costs" of globalization in those poor exploited countries, think for one moment what it REALLY means. Yeah, the average factory worker's life in any developing nation isn't as good as that of someone in the US in the same job. But what would those people's lives be like if those "horrible" jobs didn't exist? There are a huge number of very good economic reasons why it'd be the kiss of death to start paying everyone working for a US company several times the going wage, from inflation to driving out foreign businesses. It isn't perfect, but it's a step in the right direction, and I'm tired of people ignoring that.