Buy Chinese? Not even the Chinese do that!
The Asia Times online tells me that, in an effort to keep the engines of their economy firing, the Chinese government is encouraging its citizens to “buy Chinese”. But it appears that the Chinese themselves are starting to suffer what the rest of us have been for the past few years. If you will, allow me to elucidate.
Televisions and white goods? Manufacturers use circuitry from second-hand machines and — surprise! surprise! — logos that mimic famous brands. Wow, who could have seen that one coming? Because the components are worn out to begin with, they can (and have) cause(d) fire, injury or death.
Clothing? Just 31 of 60 tested children’s garments passed Chinese safety standards. (There are Chinese safety standards?) Problems included falsifying raw materials information and excessive formaldehyde content (which can cause skin or respiratory infection).
Children’s toys? Excessive amounts of lead, choking hazards, no robustness, and I believe past news articles have also pointed out the existence of PCBs in baby pacifiers ….
Children’s furniture? How about excessive amounts of lead, cadmium, chromium and other heavy metals?
Milk powder? Don’t get me started!
Fruits and vegetables? Mel.a.mine
Pet food? Say no more.
Fresh pork? Chemical additives (clenobuterol hydrochloride has been mentioned). In case you were wondering what clenobuterol hydrochloride actually is, Now Public helpfully informs us that:
[T]he public brand name for this chemical is Spriropent. The article advises that the drug stays in your system for days. Not only that, it accelerates your heart rate.
It’s used in some Chinese pig farms to fatten the animals for sale, which translates into higher profits, since each pig gains 1 kilogram of weight per day. The higher profits come to around 275% !
So we’re left with tales such as that of mother, Wang Ting, who has to travel to Hong Kong to buy US-branded baby milk formula because she has “no confidence” in domestic brands. I don’t blame her. How long will it take, I wonder, for the global tide to turn against China on this? It isn’t just one thing that they manufacture badly; it’s a whole range of goods and food across the entire spectrum of life. The Chinese have always had a reputation for being the money-hungry hustlers of Asia — loan sharks in Malaysia, for example, are called by the nickname “Ah Long” from the Cantonese — interested more in profit than quality, and the unbroken stream of horror stories about modern Chinese goods and foods doesn’t help in countering such a stereotypic image.
The problem is, citizen reluctance to one side, while China finds ready markets for its frankly dangerous goods, nothing is going to change. So I’m just going to have to read those labels, and question the sources, a bit more carefully when I shop. And you’d do well to do the same.
3 comments
Back in the days of yore, while still in university, I worked for a Chinese import company and time and again I said to the people who ran the place that no matter how cheap the tat was, they would get no repeat customers because it was so inexcusably low quality. And don’t even get me started on the epic arguments we have with health and safety and trading standards (or the somewhat… cavalier attitude towards intellectual property). In a depressingly short amount of time, no-one would take their products even if you gave them away
In the end this is one time when i think the market may actually enforce change (oh gods, tell me I didn’t just endorse the market as a self-regulator!) as more and more countries strictly regulate Chinese imports (and too late at that!) and more people – in China and elsewhere – follow Wang Ting’s example. low price isn’t worth risking your baby’s life over.
But how many people will be hurt while the “market” gets round to forcing increased quality?
Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you really don’t want to endorse Teh Market as self-regulatory in nature), you’re contradicting your own point, Sparky. You say, “Back in the days of yore….”. So, I’m assuming that this was more than a week ago? A month ago? A few years ago? Maybe the Chinese import company you worked for doesn’t exist any more, but I’m sure that others sprang up in its place. So, we have Chinese imports existing for years and people still buying it.
This concept isn’t a new one, of course. Harlan Ellison wrote a short story about it. About people who just built Well Built Things. Like a chair that was functional, and beautiful, and sturdy. And, by the end of story, the builder of those chairs is dead broke because he realises that most people don’t want that.
The Market, of course, is not self-regulatory (note the fact that it takes regulation –that free-market bugbear — to stop shoddy widgets entering any given country), and we’ve had years and years to wait for it to act. And it hasn’t yet.
Nonetheless, you’ve given much food for thought. Thanks for that.
Kaz:
No no, I quite agree with you. I think the market may do something to fix it – but the market is hellaciously slow and has low low low priority on things that are important – like health and bodily integrity and not poisoning babies. I mean the company I worked for has only just gone out of business, a good 8 years after it opened. That’s 8 years of selling monumental tat to people
We are seeing market backlash, but it isn’t enough and it’s horrendously slow and won’t happen fast enough to save a lot of lives that need it – we need regulation to stop this NOW and not after the bodies pile up and we need regulation to stop it completely
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