At different warehouses, I’ve noticed that, quite often, the cheapest of the ‘made in china’ products come in cardboard that has a noticeable pinkish/reddish tint to it (it’s also flimsier, usually). I’ve never seen cardboard like this except with stuff that was made in China, and almost always with products that are at the cheap end of the quality spectrum.
disclaimer: No statement about the overall quality of products from China is intended or implied. Chinese manufacturers make products as good or cheap as American corporations ask for.
I’ve seen the pinkish stuff, but more commonly I’ve seen Chinese stuff (especially cheap, heavy, case packaging or all three) in cardboard that tends to be yellowish, slightly sticky and smelly.
Yellow/sticky/smelly could have to do with the off gassing of chemicals from the plastics inside. As for the pink, I just assumed it was less stringent quality control in the manufacturing process, or alternate materials (paper, bamboo, wood, etc) getting mixed in. I’ve noticed that cardboard boxes from China seem to have a look of compressed shredded paper, have a “grainy” feel to them, as opposed to other cardboard boxes.
I remember reading in one of the “Imponderables” books (the Straight Dope’s more clean-cut cousin) that the reason cardboard boxes from Asia tend to be a yellowish color is that they include a percentage of straw in their makeup, whereas American cardboard boxes are brown because they are made of wood pulp. Strangely enough, I am not able to corroborate this with Google.
Not sure what would cause pinkish cardboard, though.
China is pretty enthusiastic about recycling, and a surprising number of elderly
Chinese supplement their incomes by prowling public trash cans and grabbing the cardboard (and glass, and tin…). If all the colors are in balance, it will be egg carton gray. Labels with mostly red are mildly more popular than predominantly ble or yellow ones. I’m guessing that throws the balance towards pink.