Posted on 08/18/2007 6:26:49 AM PDT by GFritsch
Reaping The Fruits Of A China-Dependent Economy
http://www.tfp.org/TFPForum/TFPCommentary/reaping_the_fruits_of_a_china-dependent_economy.html
For decades, American businessmen have been outsourcing production and setting up factories in Communist China. They cite a large and industrious work force with minimal labor costs as the reason that supposed allows them to manufacture a product at the lowest possible costs. American manufacturers employing American workers are hard-pressed to compete.
Behind the façade of Asia’s industrial powerhouse, however, is the tragic reality of a society without morals. Chinese labor conditions are notoriously horrible with little or no provisions for worker safety. Wages are low, free trade unions not allowed and living conditions can be scandalously inadequate. Human rights violations, such as forced abortion, are common. Illegal factories abound and cases of slavery are reported. Corruption and bribery are endemic making the rule of law questionable at best.
China fails the test in all the major areas for the proper running of industry in the West. While the West must pay dearly for environmental damage or carbon offsets, China is a massive environmental disaster. Violations that would shut down many a Western firm seem to have no effect on its Chinese counterpart. Food regulations are ignored and all manner of toxins, bacteria, illegal pesticides, outlawed antibiotics and carcinogens are commonly found in Chinese food imports. China is immune from damages that would trigger multimillion dollar lawsuits in the West.
Far from being the new economic miracle, China is actually the West’s gigantic sweat shop, churning out cheap goods to insatiable Western consumers.
Silence on the Left and Right
Perhaps the greatest scandal is not so much the predictably horrific record of the world’s largest Communist power. Rather it is the scandalous silence of Western leaders who allow the situation to continue.
On the left, rarely do activists focus on the abuses and violations that would awaken outrage in American soil. Sweat shops in Bangladesh or El Salvador get better press than those in China. It is known that nearly half of China's population lives without sewage treatment, and that its water is not safe to drink, and yet major environmental organizations are not insisting that Chinese vast cash reserves be used to remedy the ever-worsening situation.
On the right, businessmen cynically claim free trade will bring about reform and the destruction of the Communist party and its ideology that still rules supreme. It is a claim that they have made since the eighties. And yet decade after decade, the Chinese population still suffers under an immoral system that systemically violates human rights and persecutes religion.
Moreover, Western technology is being channeled into an ever-growing Chinese military which is building up its power and targeting the very capitalist hand that feeds it.
Safeguarding Americans
While Chinese have long suffered under the present regime, it is now Americans who are becoming victims. The Chinese government’s blatant disregard for even the most elementary sanitary standards is beginning to become public
The Chinese food scandal first began when dogs and cats started dying from pet food processed in the United States and Canada using melamine-contaminated wheat flour from China. Over 100 pet food brands were recalled.
The scandals have now extended to foods directly threatening the health of American consumers. Seafood, toothpaste and other consumables were found to contain dangerous substances. In addition, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that as many as 20 million chickens and thousands of hogs in several states may have been fed contaminated Chinese feed.
Now Chinese mismanagement and shoddy practices are affecting the most helpless of victims – American children. Chinese-made toys containing excessive amounts of lead now threaten countless children to dangerous exposure.
Indeed, Fisher-Price recalled nearly 1.5 million toys because of the problem. Mattel has just announced a worldwide recall of more than 18 million toys from store shelves and homes because of lead paint and hazardous magnets.
Cheap Goods
Those who claim Chinese goods provide cheap wares to American consumers would do well to take a second look.
Such cheap goods come at great cost to the Chinese workers who frequently work in substandard sweat shop conditions. They are now coming at a great price to American business in the form of recalled goods and ruined reputations.
Finally they cost dearly to American consumers and particularly children whose health is endangered by substandard and chemical-laced goods and foods.
Such costs are to be expected from a Communist government that has long had a callous disregard for human life and holds itself to no standards save that of its immoral philosophy.
However, now that American lives are directly threatened, it should serve as a wake-up call to question seriously the wisdom of continuing present trade policies.
It should at least serve to alert the public that “Made in China” is no longer a manufacturing label but a warning.
China is our biggest one-sided trading party and our biggest enemy.
But ... but ... but ... Henry Kissinger can’t be wrong!
I haven’t shopped for anything ingestible at Walmart since the pet food debacle. Since Walmart groceries and their Equate store-brand drugs and most of their prescription meds are Chinese made (that’s what “Distributed by Walmart” really means), they have lost my confidence and my business. We shouldn’t pay for the rope that hangs us.
Henry’s not only wrong, he’s wrong out of both sides of his mouth.
” Since Walmart groceries and their Equate store-brand drugs and most of their prescription meds are Chinese made (that’s what “Distributed by Walmart” really means), “
I hate to be the first to tell you, but all the other grocery companies are no different. The “fortified with vitamins” on virtually all cerals, I have been told, is done with Chinese products.
We shouldn’t pay for the rope that hangs us.
Amen. I’ve been surprised by the defense of the chinese manufacturers and US importers on these boards. It’s like ordinary, common sense outrage is trumped by ideology in a lot of people’s minds.
Imagine if Hitler’s Germany had a population of over one billion. Imagine that our government had shipped our manufacturing base to Germany in the thirties. Imagine that our entire beauracracy had their pockets stuffed with Deutsche Marks.
Imagine what would have happened in the forties.
It’s about to happen now.
More than we can imagine is shipped from China to Mexico where the only operation performed is a “Made In Mexico” sticker affixed to the piece of crap.
You've nailed it.
Japan just had a massive recall of Chinese goods, too.
These threads aggregate all the latent anger about outsourcing and try to blame it all on the chicoms.
And also impressive is the ignorance here of the fact that there's more freedom to start and run a business in Communist China than there is in Nanny State America.
Chinese are trending toward more affluence, more trade, more information capitalism, and no such thing as real bread-store communism. Meanwhile, 'true conservatives' are beginning to toy with the idea that staying home and letting Hillary's Socialism take over might be good for America.
Communists are not winning the war in China, it's the difference in expectation of standard of living that we have here vs. most every other Asian country, Mexico, Turkey, Poland that are all ratcheting up their manufacturing competitiveness.
You can shift all the manufacturing out of China and move it to the Philippines, Malaysia, etc....but that's not what you're complaining about, is it? It's that we're not able to keep up the expectations of a OSHA-fied, EEOC ordained, ADA-compliant, EPA-safe, IRS-ready factory job to produce consumer products at rock-botom prices that American Union workers demand. Ironic.
Oh my! John Lennon, is that your ghost? LOL!?
Ok, Let's play your game.
Imagine that America had played a part in crushing the German economy after WWI such that a murderous Nationalistic twit came to power promising Socialism to cure the economic ills of Germany 'caused' by the Allies.
Oh, that's right....we did.
We could do that again if we like.
Right now, the Chinese government is our nominative enemy, but the Chinese people actually like Americans.
We could start a trade war, destroy our economy, and also convert most of the chinese people into our enemies, as well.
The chinese have successfully nationalized their socialism, and unlike the Phillipines, they intend to rule the world.
Only one thing stands in their way.
Yes.
The chinese people, in gas lines.
The chinese people, furious about their own food safety.
The chinese people, furious about factories closing or not getting their voting payments on time.
The chinese people, furious about a war.
etc, etc.
The chinese people shake of dynasties like soy sauce off a peking duck's back.
The PRC is just another in the history. And the chinese are not the sissies that our leftist protesters are. The PRC may actually be more precarious today than dynasties of old.
Whatever happens, we MUST stay supportive and open to the chinese people, while maintaining effective pressure on the cadres.
Although my family doesn't buy any food or drug products that can be identified as having originated in China, apparently that doesn't insulate us from the filthy and dangerously contaminated Chines food and drugs that are pouring into the US now in a deluge of filth and chemical contamination.
The same FDA that has now banned one of my most helpful and inexpensive natural medicines because it has cut into the big pharmaceutical corporations' profits on statin drugs now allows China to peddle it's dangerously contaminated vitamin and mineral products to American companies who then package and sell it with no labeling to show where it originated.
Why do we allow a filthy, grossly polluted country like China to peddle dangerous food and drug products here while US made products have to at least appear to meet stringent government set standards? Do the American people still choose and elect our government leaders and lawmakers who appoint and oversee the regulating agencies? Or are they merely useful pawns of big multinational corporations foisted off on us by those same multinationals who are enriching the most dangerous and totalitarian nation on the planet at the expense of our and our children's' future health and safety? I'm probably too old and near the end of the road to be seriously affected by this outrageous situation, but I fear for the future of my children and grandchildren.
Hillary wants your vote, and/or your hyperbolic writing style about evil corporations for her campaign.
It wouldn't be necessary to bring about any of those unwanted results you mention to simply ensure that only food and drug products that meet strict US standards of purity, measurable quality, and effectiveness are imported and repackaged here. According to my pharmacist, the only vitamin that is still produced in the US on a large scale is vitamin C. Almost all other vitamins that are widely distributed here are imported in bulk either directly from China, or from China through Mexico or a Caribbean middle-man country where it is made into pills, liquids, or powders and packaged for sale in the US without any country of origin labeling. The same situation exists on a smaller scale for many controlled prescription only drugs as well, particularly generic versions of name brand prescription only drugs.
We don't need to start a trade war, we only need to unequivocally demand that imported food and drugs from China and other cheap labor nations are comparable in quality and purity to American made products. Would requiring China to meet our food and drug safety standards start a trade war, or worse yet a shooting war? I doubt the Chinese manufacturers want a trade or shooting war any more than we do, but they will only decide to reliably meet our standards if and when we demand it or else not accept any more of their product.
Unfortunately the folks who run our government and make the rules are not going top do anything to upset the multinational corporations, who are their bread and butter at campaign time in spite of any deceptively named and easily dodged legislation such as McCain's campaign finance reform law.
Nice sentiment, but useless. The "cadres" have cronyized their capitalism into an absurd level of overproduction. Chinese labor is cheap because there are hundreds of factories producing the same plastic fasteners for the other factories competing at cut throat prices. I get correspondence from some of them and they are basically giving away their products. The overproduction and overinvestment is spurred by keeping the currency low which causes overinvestment in the infrastructure priced in their currency.
The bottom line is that their economy is due for a couple of decades of deflation like Japan. Naturally they will try to blame "protectionism" on our part when the problems were created by them.
Nanny state needs to be dismantled and thrown, along with our elite political class (elected and non-elected) into the Potomac.
But I agree with you.
I argue that the long term to solution to all of this is not short term Congressional tinkering, or cyclical populist electioneering in this country, but rather long term improvements to American market competitiveness while accepting the offshoot of some of our basic expectations.
One of those expectations is that somehow, Americans demand a superior standard of living (1/4 acre lot with house, two new cars, etc). THis is fine. An American tradition. But it cannot be had manufacturing widgets with zero markup that the impoverished world is making (coerced or otherwise) for nothing.
Thus, this American worker has to make more markup on his products....and thus, you've immediately got a complicated stratification of manufacturing/service which lends itself to demagoguery and class warfare in the form of Hillary.
We need to let the American worker create this markup by lancing the federal boil on his back. Cut taxes. Cut regulation.
Forget this idiotic geographical, pork-intensive "investment opportunity zones"...but instead create chicom competitive "investment opportunity layers" which allow small, creative startups in America a few years of growth and risk before the IRS, EEOC and OSHA come crashing down on them.
That's what could give American small business a way to innovate our way ahead of the asian brute-force method.
Ok, we’re in violent agreement then. Regulations, also often at the State and local level are crushing business. The other issue is that globalization is a great equalizer of incomes and as third world incomes have gone up, rich Americans have gone down. The irony is that the middle class Americans whose incomes have dropped don’t think they are rich, but by global and any realistic standards they are rich.
Try this instead.....
We don't need to start a trade war, we only need to unequivocally demand that government remove the barriers placed on doing business -IN- America that makes it impossible to manufacture vitamins/etc in America.
What I don't get is how you condemn the corporate interests who move production overseas because the cheap-ass American consumer market DEMANDS the "lowest price, always" ...and yet you demand that all production be controlled by American corporate interests to protect your safety, enforced by the same government panderers that brought you the corrupt McCain Feingold bill.
Sounds like you'd be better off growing your own "economic victory garden" in your own backyard, get off the vitamin binge, and solve the problem yourself rather than contributing to this nefarious pharma bunch of which you denounce for trying to kill you.
China is a fascist state now, not a Marxist one.
You say: And also impressive is the ignorance here of the fact that there’s more freedom to start and run a business in Communist China than there is in Nanny State America.
I don’t think this is true at all. The corruption in China is huge. Lots of payoffs to government bureaucrats there. You do business with the state, and do it the states way, or they execute you, remove your kidneys and sell them on the open market.
You say: “You can shift all the manufacturing out of China and move it to the Philippines, Malaysia, etc....but that’s not what you’re complaining about, is it?”
The Philippines and Malaysia are not in the news on a daily basis with deadly tires, lead paint on kids toys, unsafe food. They are also not military rivals or even potential military rivals.
Americans are totally rich by even Taipei standards, or even Japanese standards---which is why I'm turned off by these populist cheap-chicom articles....it's not the chi or the com that's the issue!
Few people in the far east (nominally communist or democratic) can afford the suburban lifestyle which Americans demand.
Have you ever flown into ANY foreign airport the size of DFW, for example, and seen similar miles-and-miles of suburbia (which I grew up in but now can't stand, by the way)?
It just doesn't exist!
They either live in cramped vertical cities, or in low-infrastructure rural communities....there's no 'middle' in the classes.
I would disagree with you slightly on saying that globalization being an equalizer, while it is that, does not necessarily imply that it's a zero-sum game.
I don't think middle class Americans must automatically transfer their income when a chinaman gets his wings at a new factory.
Hopefully, if we deserve to win, then displaced middle class workers here will get better, smarter, higher-pay jobs that can't be easily done by rural asian bumpkins.
But this immediately gets turned into a negative by the globaluddites who think that we're all gonna die from a strategic imbalance if we don't manufacture pencils and bra-strap clips in America.
Eggsactly. They're not the current target of the populist anti-ferner tirade.
It's absolutely true. The chicom govt doesn't get anywhere near you until your company starts to have a presence and starts making cash. Then, they will want their pound of flesh. Here, the IRS and state sales tax collector is involved form the first penny made.
If you want to start a small manufacturing place and, for example, you don't want to hire a certain race to work there because they're 'subhuman' then that's just fine. The govt doesn't care one squat. No EEOC.
If a couple of workers are maimed in a machine, tough luck. No OSHA.
You build a factory, and instead of using clutch-driven electric drivers, you give the workers a philips screwdriver. No suits for carpal-tunnel syndrome, no expensive tooling, no electricity even needed to start production.
Such a factory can't happen here, and it has nothing to do with communism or fascism....it doesn't have anything to do with the govt at all.
Now as a society, we've decided that such unrestrained capitalism cannot sustain the society that we want. And we belive that eventually, the chinese people won't want that either. But for now, they do.
For better or worse, they really do have more freedom to start and run a business than is available in Nanny State America.
Do they? I suppose you’ve figured out what their confusing 1-175 ranking means?
I see that “paying taxes” in the US is ‘62’.
Is that good? Could you focus in a little more and tell me what you mean?
Tell me about a local guy opening a car-repair biz in New Jersey, vs. Shenzhen.
I suspect the WorldBank doesn’t really focus much on that.
Yep!
The chinese people I’ve known didn’t have much fondness for their government. They didn’t have much for ours either. But they did love america and wanted to be part of it.
Something that bothers me about the chinese people, though, is that they have a lower expectation as to their rights. They are quick to back away from authority. This isn’t unique to chinese folks however. I see this in all immigrants. They don’t fully grasp the importance of the american constitution and the bill of rights...gun rights, freedom of the press, electoral college, etc
That's not just immigrants or chinese.
I think most American college kids these days have no real concept of these things either, other than GWB is bad!
All I ask regarding the matter that this thread is about is that the suppliers of all imported food and drugs are forced to import only products that meet US standards for purity, safety, and quality, and are packaged with a label that identifies the country of origin. Is that to much to ask, or does asking mean that I must surely be a raving left wing whackjob and a rabid advocate for reviving the Smoot-Hawley act?
1-175 ranking
They ranked 175 countries.
I’m not sure what you are arguing for. My view is that the Chinese are a fascist nation, who should be opposed on moral grounds until they show respect for human rights, and that the Chinese pose a military threat to the USA and its allies. My view as a consumer is that their products are unsafe and can’t be trusted, so I will avoid buying them.
Same here.
Somehow this thread became a venting place for apparently frustrated advocates for totally unrestricted free trade with any and all nations regardless of the consequences for ordinary American consumers who don't have access to information that would warn them of unsafe imported products. As long as either government agencies or private companies deliberately ignore the danger of the 3rd world level health and safety regulations, or more often the total lack of any kind of beneficial regulations, in China and other nations which produce cheap food and pharmaceutical products I will refuse to buy or use them.
And I might add, I will warn as many people as possible to do the same. Because avoiding those items just might save their life or avoid permanent damage to their health by unsafe products. If anyone doubts what I'm saying just ask someone who recently lost a beloved pet to dangerously contaminated pet food products imported from China. That isn't the same as losing a beloved human being of course, but the principle is the same, namely that a cheap but unsafe imported food or pharmaceutical product may well be the worst "bargain" item that anyone can buy.
That is a good point. But i think I have higher expectations of people that come thousands of miles and jump through several hoops to get here.
yeah. money does that to people.
I've been surprised at how idealogically committed some are to unregulated markets without realizing that this implies caveat emptor, which means when we find out Chinese products are unsafe we must make a big stink about it and stop buying those products, since it is the only protection and accountability in the system for the buyers. It doesn't make sense to claim the market will account for low quality or dangerous goods, the invisible hand, and then jump on anyone saying don't buy Chinese. We are the market. It's a strange mindset; sort of "the corporations are always right since I believe in capitalism, take whatever they give you."
What if you and I decided to run for president?
Two Americans who havd had a bellyfull of limousine liberals in the White House. We would stand for BIG change. We’d get under the incumbent congresscritters’ skin to the point that they’d happily give up their seats.
We’d slash staffers to the quick and reduce the size of the federal government back to where it was during Jefferson’s time. We’d pass a law that would allow any citizen to carry a handgun onboard any airline so the passengers would have better chanches.
Education, Health, OSHA would be memories. We’d fight for swift application of the death penalty in many more types of cases. No warehousing of felons; just execute and bury.
All illegal aliens would be rounded up and ceremoniously kiciked across our southern border. Not one would remainl. Instructions to Police Officers would be: if they can’t speak English drive them directly to the nest cattlecar south.
Inter Muslims until we can find a country that will take them.....but get them ALL out and never, never, let another one in.
Drill for oil like crazy and tell the sheiks we hope they drown in it.
Ask Dianne Feinstein how much money she and her husband are making off their investments in China. Ask her why she cried and kowtowed after the Chinese shot down our EP-3 to steal our surveillance technology, begging the president not to act in a way that would offend the Chinese.
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Scary.
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