1988RedT2 wrote: And I will address this. It has everything to do with liberty. Should we reward a country with a long list of human rights violations with the economic benefits of essentially unrestricted trade? Just because everyone's doing it doesn't make it right. If I pick up a random piece of cheap crap and look for the country of origin, what am I likely to find? I don't doubt that someone, somewhere in China is cranking out good crap, but I would opine that it makes up but a small percentage of their total exports. I have and will continue to purchase alternatives to Chinese-made products. Inevitably, I will pay more. This is the price of naive idealism, I suppose. Does anyone consider why things are cheaper to produce in China? Could it have anything to do with the fact that manufacturers don't have to deal with the EPA, the FDA, unions and any number of other organizations whose purpose is to prevent abuse of the environment, the customer, and the worker? What is the Chinese government's position on the billions of dollars of counterfeit goods that enter this country? Children's toys containing lead and cadmium? Food products containing high levels of chemicals banned in the U.S.? Let a man speak out about how his child was poisoned and he is thrown in jail. Nothing to see here.
Good points. China is still a "good" place to get cheap crap made, whether it is the "right" place is of course questionable.
China does seem to have at least some environmental controls in effect (I am certain they are way behind the US in that area though). I don't know to what extent in industry, but they are certainly clamping down on auto emissions. They are also very aware of how bad the various problems (lead, bad baby food etc.) are for the country in general. Being very open market capitalistic, they know a bad image of a product will only hurt sales. As and example many Chinese no longer trust Chinese made baby formula, the Chinese are scrambling to get US made products.
Counterfeit Products: That is an interesting one. From someone I know who asked about that when he was there, he was told that China has little interest in controlling that since it represents a viable industry (remember they are VERY capitalistic).
Also of note about counterfeit products. You would think that China would be flooded with counterfeit this and counterfeit that. Not true at ALL. At least in the larger cities, the nice cars are all name brand foreign cars. In the nicer areas there are MANY high end brand stores that you would expect to see in Beverly Hills etc. The Chinese are clearly becoming "brand conscious" and with that are going down the same road the US is.
And realistically, the "problem" with knock-off goods really isn't that they are being made, it is if people are representing them as real and selling them as such (ebay). This is almost more of a consumer problem though. If you are buying a high end item, and you can't tell if the item is high end or not, maybe you shouldn't be buying it (makes you wonder why anyone every buys a diamond). I understand that brand protection is good to keep confidence in a product, but when someone is selling a $30 shoe (or bag etc) for $200 because of marketing hype they are just begging for a knock-off.
That's the problem with USA made stuff. Nobody wants to pay for it. We all got used to all the cheap electronics and then everything else followed.
I tried to buy a pair of docker-like pants that were made in the USA. I found a company, and they only wanted $112 for a pair. Nevertheless, I've gotten into the habit of visiting the site below before buying anything. We HAVE to start buying American, start to manufacture more produce in the USA, and export more of them. Does it bother anyone that most of the stuff we buy from China they learned how to make from us?
