Sure it’s only Canada, but come on. Is the Chinese government incapable of establishing and enforcing quality control for food products? And is the US so impotent in our trade agreements with China that we can’t at least put an embargo on food products, for starters, that originate in China?
Sure the power lies with the consumers–use the power of the boycot and all that. But really, should we even have to worry about it? It’s not like they’re just sending out unhealthy snacks, they’re sending out POISONOUS snacks. Repeatedly. With the same poison every time.
Would it be feasible to even prohibit the import of edibles and childrens’ toys that come from China?
We moved our production to China to avoid regulation. That is why we can not be upset when we have to pay the consequences occasionally. We do not need regulation, food testing or any thing else. If people die, other will quit buying the product. it is self regulating.
:dubious: I’m sure that sentence was supposed to read “Sure it has only shown up in Canada…”
Either way. I don’t go to bargain stores or buy from places like Wal Mart and the like. Especially when it comes to food stuff or small nick knacks, mainly because of my doubts in the safety or quality of these goods coming in from China.
Sure, I end up spending more for items but I’m not willing to compromise my health just for a cheaper price.
At what point can you start threatening someone who has got you by the balls?
It’s not feasible to do a whole lot that’s meaningful to China, unless we’re going to drop nuclear bombs on them. We’ve transferred the bulk of our manufacturing capacity to them. The bulk of our consumer goods are made there. They hold a significant amount of our currency and treasury bonds.
As it is, we’re suffering economically. How can we actually ban imports from China? Our consumers can’t afford to buy anything else.
The time to do something about it was before we granted them M.F.N. status. Now, China’s in the driver’s seat and feeding us poison.
But why must we honor the MFN trade status? Who’s to hold us accountable if we just say, “Fukkit, you’re being a douche. We’re giving the business to Mexico even if it costs us a bit more.” They have investments they can dump? Let 'em. They’ll suffer without our money as well. Wouldn’t they?
ETA: I am not going to address the ‘dropping bombs on them’ thing. As a former employer used to say, “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.” So that’s pretty much a given as a non-option.
Odds are, you’re looking at idiocy and not malevolance. Secondarily, the Chinese have a rather different view of what’s “normal” and in the cities are exposed to vastly greater levels of toxins and pollutants than we consider acceptable. This doesn’t mean it’s not a problem, but the Chinese government never felt the slightest urge to regulate pollution until the Olympic games, and that was in Beijing only and temporary.
More like a combination of amorality and the Tragedy of the Commons. In this case, the “commons” being overused is the ability to adulterate food with poison and not get caught or punished. One or a few producers somewhere could probably get away with it; but when it becomes ubiquitous it becomes impossible to hide. It’s only idiotic collectively.
I’d still call that “malevolence”, or at least ruthlessness. Thing is, past a certain point malevolence & ruthlessness become stupidity, so there’s no contradiction.
I think perhaps the solution to the food contamination issue is going to have to be to require some level of inspection on this side of the pond. Sure, that will piss off the Chinese, but given how much of a problem this has been, and how other import foods (hell, even American products) are inspected in various places, we have a right and a need to do this.
Other solutions are going to have to come from consumer pressure and business interests. When we are the world’s breadbasket, why the flying fuck are we importing wheat gluten and the like from China? “It’s cheaper”??? Yes, and it’s heavily contaminated.
One of the things I liked about the whole obscene oil prices thing was that it was raising the costs of transporting things so that we couldn’t do silly things like export wheat to China, have it turned into gluten and returned here cheaper than it could be turned into gluten here.
Then too there is a corporate stupidity issue. I’m shooting from the hip on this one with my ‘facts’, but I remember the problems Hasbro had with the toys painted with lead. After far too many recalls, they went back and heavily criticized the Chinese companies over the whole thing. At that point, the Chinese government stepped in and bitchslapped Hasbro, which shut them up. The thing being pointed out to them was that over 80% of their product came from China and that if they were going to keep “slandering” China, they may well find themselves without any product.
Hopefully the lesson learned by Hasbro was that they couldn’t trust the Chinese and that they’d better keep silent while they quietly started making plans to move most of their production to other countries.
Another way of putting that would be “Too many eggs in an untrustworthy basket”.
Which would apply to all of us at this point. We’re in a precarious position with reliance, economics and resource issues in that we’ve put too many eggs into the China basket and allowed them too much control over our needs. Given their government, we can’t simply impose blanket penalties on them. So what needs to happen is that we need to not only stop shipping them additional industries, we need to rethink whether or not it is advantageous or even useful for us to have them making certain things (like the wheat gluten) for us.
As i recall it, HASBRO closed a big plant in RI, and moved everything to China, putting 350+ Americans out of work. Now they find that the dragon is dictating to them–how sad!
As Chimera says we’re too intertwined to do this. A significant portion of U.S. companies’ physical plant and human capital is located in China. It isn’t as if there is a series of unused but staffed factories waiting in Mexico to take over Chinese imports. We re-established trade with China in 1972 and the explosion in Chinese exports to the United States started in about 1992. It would take years to disentangle.
