American toy companies are complicit in this, as well as retailers like Walmart, but what is our own culpability as consumers? Would this kind of exploitation be possible if we weren’t so eager for a bargain? Would you be willing to pay a few dollars more for these products if you could be assured that they were not made by sick, teenage girls living in virtual slavery?
Will our government ever care? What would it take to make them care?
Merry Christmas to the kids who make our Barbie dolls. 
Thank you for our Barbie dolls, Chinese peasant girls who inhale toxic fumes!
The Chinese have been successfully uniting the worst parts of communism and captialism for some time.
The U.S. government might care - if China stopped trading with us. Then we’d have to make our own cheap junk.
Wow, good thing we live here and not there.
What’s the Great Debate?
Sweatshops good?
Not to downplay the actual situation, but believe it or not things are getting better in the Chinese sweatshops. Not so say that the situation is good or anywhere near ideal, but things are on an upward trend. You can also argue about the speed of the progress, but some progress is better than none. Several of my buddies now work as inspectors of contract factory conditions and they all report how they have seen improvements over the past few years.
The other thing that never gets mentioned in this is that those people doing the work are most likely for the first time in their lives actually accumulating capital. It’s a damn harsh way to save some money but it’s about the only avenue open. And that money is making a very real difference in the impoverished countryside at the grassroots village level. It is changing Chinese society as peasants for the first time ever in Chinese history have at least some freedom of movement and some financial freedom.
It ain’t all negative in Santa’s workshop.
Keep the pressure on for companies, and the contract factories they source from, to improve conditions. Nike et al sure as hell don’t want to be caught out. Of course, that also means that you will pay more for those goods since it costs money to make factories safer.
Can you be a bit more specific, China Guy? I don’t see how death from toxic fume inhalation could be called “some progress.”
As a peasant myself (i.e. small-time farmer making about 1/3 of the federal minimum wage), I am suspicious of the all-too-common equation “money=freedom.” I know it is hard for many urban-dwellers to understand, but there is great value in honest physical work,outside, with nature, in a community where you know and work with your neighbors. I have never been to China, but have read about peasant life there. It sounds tough, but preferable to kissing some boss’ behind, in a toxic factory.
I know who made my Christmas present this year–those good people at the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
…by the way, how far can you “progess” on 30 cents an hour?
:smack: “progress”
That is what my dad was making back during the depression and so were a lot of other people (the lucky ones, generally). It helps if a loaf of bread only costs a nickle (which it did).
Leroy, the cost of living is a little different in the Chinese countryside where people generally lack the opportunity to make even that 30 cents. Subsistence farming for a few hundred million people.
I’m talking about the sweatshops in general. Certainly you can find horrible examples (and they crop up in the US as well). Certainly, the base level is pretty dang low. My point is that the base level ancedotally at least is slowly rising. That is a good thing. Is it where it should be, probably not. Keep the pressure on if you want the base level to keep rising and be prepared to pay more for goods.
This is something that has always concerned me. I collect, well, toys.
And I know who makes them. And I always wonder, what can I do to make their lives better? It’s part of the wonders of capitalism, sure. But every time I see a movie, I make a matching donation to the EFF, (Everyone knows about the EFF? www.eff.org ) to protect our rights to… well, post what we want on here, as consumers in a digital age. What could I do when I buy a toy made with chinese labor, to try to improve safety standards over there?
Our government cares very much. In fact, it has gone to great lengths to help create this very situation.
The problem is not with us buying toys, it is with the entire global capitalist system of exploitation and oppression. If we stop buying these toys, it will just mean less work for the starving. The only way to make the situation better is to overthrow the entire system.
Overthrow the entire system? Where’s your Christmas spirit?
Just kidding.
Okay… so we should overthrow the Chinese government and… er… Yes. The President should get the Army to invade China and implement a living wage among all one billion inhabitants, along with OSHA approved work environments.
I dunno. It strikes me as a bit of interfering where we’re not wanted.
“I dunno. It strikes me as a bit of interfering where we’re not wanted.”
So was liberating the Nazi death camps.
…
I see your location, Rider, and I understand your opinion. You may have mistaken my gentle twitting of Chumpsky’s opinion that America is the source of all evil in the world, that we have no humaitarian compassion in our foreign policy, and that if we interfere we’re imperialist, and if we ignore we’re inhumane.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=152330
China is… I’d like to say China is as big a threat to the US as the USSR was, simply because it would be easy to say. China is going through a generational change in leadership, and apparently, from the indications I’ve seen, going back to the historical isolationism, culturally, that it has embraced since it beached whoseyface’s fleet.
It has a complete lack of interest in human rights, as far as I can tell. But I don’t know enough to know what we should do about it, except that I’m pretty sure a massive war would be a bad thing.
It may be that only the Chinese can free themselves. That’s not washing my hands of the subject, but an expression of the opinion that true change can only come from within, though external aid is always good… after.
Taking into account that quite recently the Chinese were starving to death by the millions, or killing each other by the millions, I would say the present state of things is a great improvenment. Furthermore, it shows China is moving in the right direction.
The perfect is the enemy of the good and the present situation is pretty good when compared to a few decades ago.
Some people seem to have the notion that the world was initially a perfect utopia until some people came along and spoiled it but it is the other way around. The world, including China, was a pretty bad place and it takes a lot of human effort to improve it. You cannot magically make a country rich overnight. It will take several generations of hard work and that is what they are doing. There is no better solution. The reason rich countries buy Chinese stuff is because it is cheap. If things keep going at the present rate, in 25 to 40 years China will be a developed country and developed countries will look for cheap labor elsewhere. Many countries have gone through similar processes recently.
I have been visiting China every year for a few years now and it is amazing to see the rate of development and construction. Amazing. Highways are being built like the government has money to burn. Apartment blocks are going up everywhere. In every apartment you see air conditioners and refrigerators. This was unthinkable just a couple of decades ago.
For the people who grew up under the threat of starving to death, this is a huge leap forward. They are willing to work as hard as they can to make a better life for themselves and their children. Their grandchildren will grow up in comfort and many will become spoiled and lazy, just like has happened in the rest of the countries that went through the same process.
Would you call it a ‘Great Leap Forward’?
Seriously, that’s the other half of the issue. Capitalism is viral. One guy gets an idea, starts doing something, next guy wants it too. Called Keeping Up With The Joneses. If China doesn’t isolate itself soon, it will become, well… one of us.
Engulfing Hong Kong may have become the poison pill to kill it. Or maybe not. There’s just not enough time to tell.