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.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.