Made In China

There have been several scandals involving Chinese made goods. If it's not toothpaste made with antifreeze, it's lead paint on children's toys or toxic cough syrup. Canned fruit tends to be the worst. Thankfully those little oranges come already in their own wrapper.

Back in the mid 20th century, the Made in Japan used to be the mark of inferiority. That changed in the 1980s when companies such as Sony and Honda began making names for themselves. Now, many of these big companies contract out their manufacturing to the lowest bidder. It's a fairly common business practice in both the private and public sector. The problem is that Chinese businesses always seem to be the low bidder. Sony does this, so does Apple, and HP in the case of electronics. Many of those contract companies are based in the Republic of China (aka Taiwan) but have factories in the People's Republic of China. (Two different countries despite what the UN claims) This is done to skirt around certain laws. The PRC itself is managed by an oligarchy of elites under an authoritarian system. It is not a communist country, despite what they claim. Displays of freeing oppressed workers and executing corrupt officials on the spot are only done to appease us foolish westerners into thinking that they're on top of things. The truth is that Chinese officials let A LOT of things slide. What we know about is only the tip of the iceberg. I'm also sure that what the Chinese government knows about is also but a small portion of what actually goes on.

The big problem is that China truly is now the 'world's factory' as one person put it in the Financial Post today. I have several items sitting on my desk right now. My Sony PSP was made in China. Ironically, the game currently inside it was made in the US. The remote for my DVD player was made in china. My Camera bag was made in China. My laptop, and Apple iBook G4 was 'assembled in China.' The laptop's power supply was also made in China. In fact, I'm willing to bet most items in any given room of your home were made in China, contain parts that were made in China, or were manufactured using equipment made in China. Everything from the furniture to the light bulbs. The cloths on your back are probably the only exception, most of which are now made in India or Indonesia. The first world is sure fueling the third world's economy. Many big businesses have turned there to avoid lawsuits from litigation happy/disgruntled customers, costly fights with greedy unions, high taxes, etc. It's just cheaper and easier to do business in those countries. It's not that these companies are evil (well, maybe Sony is), it's just that it's become very difficult to do business and remain competitive in North America. Such so that it's now actually cheaper to make items for local consumption half-way around the world. It's easy for us to say "I support Canadian workers" or "I'll only buy Canadian goods because I know they're safer for my kids to use." Guess again. As I said, it's impossible to find any item that isn't somehow linked to the Chinese economic leviathan. It's really our fault for not maintaining a competitive edge in manufacturing. Not all North American goods are of top notch quality anymore. I think cars are the best example where Hondas and Toyotas tend to have double the shelf life of Fords and GMs. Ironically, cars are the one few thing China doesn't produce for a global scale, though parts are still made there. That's about to change though. My point is that we here in North America still happily feed the beast, sometimes without even knowing it. The fact that these dangerous products exist is because we buy them. As for the poisoned products, sometimes even the companies that contracted out the work may not even realize what the Chinese are doing. It's ignorant of them, that's for sure and they should have been testing these products more closely. These Chinese factories are infamous for making unilateral decisions as to what materials to use in order to cut costs. They're not above using stuff that's known to be downright dangerous.

So what can we do to solve this problem? Well, it's already happening. Businesses are becoming more reluctant to contract their work out to Chinese manufacturers and consumers are beginning to demand more domestically made goods from reputable places like North America, South Korea, Japan, and Europe. Here in North America, we definitely need to encourage manufacturers to open up shop here and to stay here. Particularly through tax incentives and discouragement of unions form gaining too much power. I'd tackle the union issue by opening up government led arbitration systems by setting up an impartial tribunal to hear both sides and make judgments based on law. That would end some of the bickering and greed. Since strikes usually benefit nobody but fat cat union bosses, this system would certainly be a much better alternative. Thirdly, pressure needs to be put on places such as China. If they don't shape up, we'll put trade embargos on goods deemed to be dangerous. Without their badly needed North American markets, the Chinese government would certainly begin to sweat. Let them know we don't tolerate crappy, unsafe goods.