Doesn't it positively amaze you what's made in China? C'mon, admit it -- it's almost a game. "I'll bet you that's made in China." "I'll bet you it's not!" (In unison): "Holy fuck, it's made in China!"
The more pertinent question is, what's not made in China? The probability is, if it's less than ten years old, no matter what it is: sports shoes, barbecues, guitars, coffee mugs, couches, batteries, pet products, curtains, MacBooks, pianos -- they're all made in China. And when you go through your local dollar store, can you believe what you can get for a dollar? And if you're paying a dollar for it, how much was the person paid to make it? More like, how much was the person made to make hundreds of thousands of "it", day in, day out, from dawn to dusk, probably six days a week, probably living in a company dorm three hours' journey by train from their home town?
When I was a kid the joke was "Made in Japan." That usually meant "cheap, unreliable, waaaay inferior to made in America . . ." and sometimes that was true. But it's no longer true. Supercomputers, or at least all the parts for them, are made in China, by people who normally couldn't tell a solenoid from a refrigerator. They're ultra-high quality: the furniture from Ikea, which bolts together exactly like it says in the instructions -- not even half a millimeter off.
Those paintings that I buy, painted in China, for a fraction of the price I would pay if someone painted them in Canada or America (if, indeed, anyone that talented would stoop to painting them) -- it's just downright amazing.
But of course, there's a catch. There's always a catch: people are just dying to make your stuff.
And there's a big difference between Made in Japan then and made in China now: in Japan, chances are that even in the 50s and 60s, there were laws in place to protect Japanese workers and people to enforce them. In China, it's the wild, wild West of corruption and exploitation. No, not by armed gangs of thugs who get a cut of everything you do, but by OFFICIAL armed gangs of thugs who get a cut of everything you do.
Much as I like him, my friend in China takes great pains never to tell me who's painting my paintings or how much he's paying them. I probably wouldn't buy them if I knew that he pays his painters $20 a day (which is probably a gross exaggeration on my part -- but don't tell me that).
Going to Cuba was an eye-opener: hearing what doctors and teachers made a month (about $35) -- it blew my mind.
So am I going to boycott all products made in China? Hmm, guess I'll have to stop buying anything at all. I fool myself that if I don't buy them, someone else will, and anyway, the cost of living in China is one-fiftieth of what it is here, so $1 an hour is a fortune for the average Chinese girl, who's lucky to have a job anyway . . . you know how that song goes.
I just wonder which is worse: two billion peasants under the giant fist of Communism or two billion employed peasants under the giant fist of Communism?
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