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Monday, May 28, 2007

I've had enough of China!

China has given us many wonderful things in it’s time, noodles, Kung Fu movies, fire crackers, and at least two or three other things, but damn I’ve had just about enough of them!

An article from the CBC tells how Chinese inspectors found 20% of toys and children’s clothes fail safety inspections.

You’ve go to be kidding, 20% of the products failed Chinese standards! That would that be like 50% or 60% failures by our standards.

This is a nation that trades unfairly, artificially pegs is currency, buys natural resources around the world but refuses to sell strategic materials to the west. China refuses to acknowledge human rights, still allows virtual slave labour, ads chemicals and toxins to food to stretch their profit. China turns a blind eye to the infringement of intellectual properties, patents, copy rights, produces substandard fake products and sells them back to us. China has even been accused of counterfeiting prescription drugs, including malaria drugs destined for Africa. Last year there was even a fake baby formula scandal.

Not only that but China is building coal fired generation plants at breakneck speed with little concern for scrubbers or ensuring the cleanest coals are burnt. Next year China will surpass the U.S. as the number one greenhouse gas emitter and yet we gave them a by on Kyoto.

I for one am disgusted with China first and our Government second that they even allow the import of anything from China. Each time we buy a domestic item we know it was ethically produced with cleaner energy, safer workers, higher standards and controlled pollution. Each time we buy an item from China we abrogate our obligations to be good world citizens and prove ourselves to be hypocrites on topics such as human rights, global warming, and pollution. I don’t know about you but I’ve had it with China and will do my best to boycott their products. I call on the government to ban the importation of food and children’s products as a first warning that we do care how our consumer goods are created.Recommend this Post

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Seems it is not just the Chinese who offer some pretty dumb economics, and here we have the contribution of the unlikely titled Green Assassins. If China did not tightly manage its
currency we should be on a fast downhill run to depression; most of the cheap and quite crappy goods coming over here from there are conceived and produced by American capital which has gone over there to escape North American wages and standards; and the Chinese refer to their own place as the Middle Kingdom by which they mean the Empire between Heaven and Earth, they have a national view that is very dominating;. Have you forgotten your history books which teach that USA and England made war fo force China to accept the sale of opium.
OK, look a little closer in time to today, when is the last time you heard of the Americans getting away with an "accidental" overflight of their territory. Go back a bit further and check out the conduct of Chinese troops in the Korean winter. There is plenty of Canadian men who were in the Princess Pats who can tell you all about the winter and the bugles at 4am. The Chinese harbour a roiling hatred of the Western world that is corrosive and enduring. We could offer to send over some standards people who will help them to reorganize any industry line where they are not doing the reasonable thing, but it is not, absolutely not, a good idea to get snotty with them.
And stop calllng yourselves Assassins, you may as well brag that you still wet your bed.

Anonymous said...

Obviously the A in anonymous is for asshole.

They cheat us, poison us, steal technology and now you say they hate us but you want us to help them to it better so they can totaly destroy our indigenous manufacturing.

Who the hell are you, the Chinese ambasador?

Anonymous said...

I can't figure how buying cheap crap from China in a undervalued currency would drive us into a depression.

If Chinese goods were properly valued they would lose 50% of their competative edge as per Peter Navarro in his new book
"Coming China Wars."

Through artificially low currency, no enviromental laws to speak of, slave labour, stealing intellectual property, and flagrantly ignoring their WTO obligations they pump out substandard and counterfiet products.

Properly valued goods would allow us to maintain industrial jobs in Canada and through capital equipment improvements still compete.

I don't see the point of attempting to rehabilitate a cheat and scoundrel.

We are enriching China with our consumerism so they can build up their army, steal our technology and poison our planet. I'm sure they would scream much louder than most meek Canadians are doing if we treated them so badly. So screw'em, they need our raw materials more than we need what they make.

I sure anon is also gung ho to sell out with the SPP, NAU, or deep integration(what ever you wish to call it)

Anonymous said...

Please explain the concept of a good being "properly valued". It sounds suspiciously like the Medieval "just price".

Environmental laws ought to be struck down. Positive law is an act of aggression against legitimate property owners and all individuals.

Intellectual property cannot be stolen, as it is not property. Property is that which is scarce, the loss of which deprives the rightful owner of its enjoyment and use. At this point, IP defenders will say that "stealing" an idea deprives one of profit; true, but profit is not a right in the sense that one has property rights.

Ignoring WTO obligations is a step in the correct direction insofar as the WTO ought to be abolished.

A product is only substandard according to consumer demand and behaviour. There can be no objective measurement of its quality.

What's so special about Canadian jobs? Nothing--other than that you happen to live here.

The Chinese army is an artifact of the state; it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with economic activity conducted by foreigners with people in China. The USG fought (North) Vietnam in the 1960s and '70s--to no avail. Now, Vietnam is a trading partner. In short, wars don't generally occur between nation-states whose members engage in commerce. Free trade is conducive to peace.

The environment is best protected when it is private property. Pollution, etc., would be actionble in civil courts. Endangered species are result of the tragedy of the commons.

You can't speak for anyone other than yourself on the topic of who needs what from Chinese businesses. Vote with your dollar, or withhold it as you choose, but no one has any right interfering in this (true) democratic process.

Anonymous said...

Also--China is moving towards a free economy, while Western societies are becoming less free.

Percentage of French who say the free market is "the best system on which to base the future of the world": 36
Percentage of Chinese who say it is: 74

Source: U.S. PBS show Foreign Exchange with journalist Fareed Zakaria, transcript of show 315, aired on 13 Apr. 2007:

http://foreignexchange.tv/?q=node/1987

Anonymous said...

"Environmental laws ought to be struck down. Positive law is an act of aggression against legitimate property owners and all individuals.
"

Since air and water cannot be owned or conversely are owned by everyone they have no choice but be protected in context of communal rights. Pollution does not repect property boundaries and it's transportation via air and water is also an act of aggression. Is an aggression by the state towards a citizen a smaller or larger crime than a citizens aggression towards the state and/or other citizens?

I'm openly stealing a wiki arguement fron the entry on Green Libertarians

"Although many libertarians are against government regulation of business in regard to the economy, such intervention could easily be justified. A justification would look like this:

1) Pollution creates health hazards. Individuals have to pay themselves to maintain their health. Therefore, pollution is stealing.
2) Destabilization of the biosphere is initiation of force.
3) Allow that the minimal state is justified.
4) The minimal state must prevent and punish violations of the nonaggression principle.
5) Therefore, environmental regulation in a minimal state is justified. "

Anonymous said...

"Ignoring WTO obligations is a step in the correct direction insofar as the WTO ought to be abolished."

I agree the WTO should be abolished because I because I believe in fair trade not managed trade.

The problem I have with China, the U.S, and many others is they play both sides of the agreement, ignoring it when it suits them and applying it's rules when it suits them. Yes there are legal responses to these actions but the destruction of a industry or an economy is hard to compensate for after the fact.

I also have a problem with corporations being granted rights as if they were a person.
-----------------------
The use by China of slave labour is an agression and lowers the cost of goods.

The selling of unsafe and toxic laced goods is also an agression. Selling fake medicine is totaly evil and you can't get satisfaction with civil litigation in China.

Most of the world believes in IP, and support copy rights patents as a perk of being creative and to compensate for your time and development expenses. The Chinese even demand other countries not steal their technology(on the rare occassion it's original)I just expect everyone to play by the same rules or discard them but don't play both sides.

When you add in patent costs, trademark costs, non slave labour costs, following their own enviromental laws(which they usually ignore), the factory subsidies in the form of the government forcing banks to make loans to money losing business money with no expectation of payback, and several other items you get a "properly priced" product.

As for China becoming a free economy why are they allowing foreign investment into mining but not allowing export of certain minerals. They wish the capital to exploit their resources but won't sell them to us and don't allow foreigners to benifit by buying stocks on the Chinese stock exchange.

I would think a libertarian would see the aggression of the chinese system as repugnant and since libertarians do believe in defending themselves would support a passive defense of boycott against them.