Protest in Guangzhou: Why would you burn garbage?
Obama in China: Long gone, and still headlinin'
Barbie Spa: For the cosmopolitan plastic beauty in you
Interview: Coco Zhao, from jazz to M. Butterfly
Week Around the Ists
Oh boy, we are just beginning to love the things that we can show you here now that Youtube is back. And with these two freshly-uploaded videos, you have two different broadcasters — Australia's Channel 7 and Al-Jazeera English — and their take on the topic of "Made in China". China has just overtaken Japan as Australia's largest trading partner. The spate of headline-grabbing product quality issues, particularly the high profile toy recalls made by Mattel prompted Channel 7 to ask the question: Can we still trust "Made in China"? Their reporters went all the way to Foshan where the Lee Der factory (that made all those lead-laced toys) is located, and spoke to a few ex-employees who are now jobless since the factory has closed down.
On the right, Al-Jazeera offers an interesting look at the harsh realities of globalisation by taking us all the way to Prato, in the heart of Italy's textile industry. But as factories have shut down one after the other due to the rise of manufacturers in China, sweatshops have come up to replace them. And who are staffing all these sweatshops? The Chinese, of course — many of them illegal immigrants. We won't give you the entire story here. Go watch it for yourself. You will be glad you did.
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ken, it's hard to watch these if you don't turn off shanghaiist's auto refresh.
that said, i dunno, there's nothing anyone can do to change this state of affairs.
after china, after wages rise, africa will be the next place exporting the cheapest stuff possible. after that, who knows. what we do know is that only the poorest will continue making these products unless people decide one day that they want to pay more for their products, or there is a massive "correction" in the global economy, which won't happen any time soon.
When you speak of Chinese sweatshops in Italy popping up, I thought of an interview on "Russia Today" with the Agrarian Party's candidate for Russia's next president. He was discussing the problem of hundreds of thousands of illegal Chinese crossing illegally into Siberia and the Ukraine and of an official policy by Beijing that encourages Chinese peasants to migrate around the world and especially to China's neighbors to set up Chinese colonies.
China = Bad