China

[Kire]

ok me and my mate been talking. Checked his MP3 made in china..... check the dell PC we are on..... made in china... checked the RM screens ... made in USA my mp3 china why is eveything made in China >< slave labour what i never questioned it till today lol can any one explain why?

 

[Eulore]

ok me and my mate been talking. Checked his MP3 made in china..... check the dell PC we are on..... made in china... checked the RM screens ... made in USA my mp3 china why is eveything made in China >< slave labour what i never questioned it till today lol can any one explain why?

You just noticed this?

It's because china owns the world.

And they have enough people to have sweatshops every 2 feet.

 

[LadyKiKi]

Not slave labour. Cheap labour. It's a technique used by companies to keep costs down. Because people are desperate for work in China, they set up factories and branches there and get everything manufactured by the people in China at a very cheap cost. Whereas if they were to produce it back in their own land, e.g. North America or England (some well developed countries to name a few), the cost of labour would be so much higher.

 

[Rones]

Also opens up sales in those foreign countries with the added competition from imports and shipping costs. Offshored factories don't just ship goods back to the states. Much gets sold right in China with the profits going back to the owners in NA.

 

[Answa~]

What's funny is that the souvenirs sold here in Puerto Rico are made in China, too... Probably everywhere. I imagine the look on people's faces when they see coquís and shit on plates...

 

[Direwolf]

Incredibly low production costs. No need for benifets, safety equipment, training. Easily replacable employees. In short you can produce something there at a small fraction of the cost.

 

[Sculli]

A while back I was walking through the household goods section of Fred Meyer (grocery store chain that sells other stuff as well). A woman in her late 30's was looking a a pot, or a pan or something like that, I didn't really pay attention, I was looking for an espresso maker myself.

So I overhear her asking "Hey sweety, what do you think about this one?", as she hands whatever it was to her probably around 7 or 8 year old daughter. The daughter looks at it, turns it around, and then with the greatest disappointment imaginable lets out a sigh saying "Made in China!"

I could go on and on about it. The United States is keeping up a decade old embargo on Cuba, an embargo that was essentially created based on hurt pride. At the same time the US is supporting a communist government, known for civil rights violations, by allowing for free trade with China. Even further, we allow U.S. companies to not only support the communist government and its oppressive practices, but we also allow U.S. companies to aid that government in the oppression of its people. Google censors its search in China, and redirects all Chinese IP space to a google.cn search that is party controlled in terms of what results are and are not acceptable.

Yahoo turns over records of two system critics to the Chinese. The critics are subsequently jailed for their anti-communist activities.

The U.S. Congress holds hearings based on those incidents, but the shareholders turn a deaf ear and enjoy the profits. If you own GOOG or YHOO, be it directly or through funds administered by a financial institution, then you are just as guilty as the Chinese.

In fact we are all guilty, we all own lots of things made in China.


On the flipside, Russia is a prime example that a large country like that is not effectivly governed by a democracy or a republic system. The best times Russia has ever seen was under Stalin. Same with China, if you let them loose and let them be a democracy, then chaos will ensure. That many people are simply more efficiently governed using a dictatorship.

Anyway, I am cool with the way the current China works, I am just saying that those who are not will have to stop supporting the current China.

 

[Kire]

I bet if you go to china has "made in USA" or something on the bottom of everything of theres

 

[Rones]

Google censors its search in China, and redirects all Chinese IP space to a google.cn search that is party controlled in terms of what results are and are not acceptable.

Google fought this battle for a very long time. It was either no google or slightly censored google. That is the only choice China would allow. Given those two choices, even a censored version is better than nothing. The censored version still has the ability for information to slip through...there is no chance though without any google at all.

At the same time the US is supporting a communist government,

Kind of. China has been making large improvements in going to a capitalist market. If anything, China is more a socialist nation now than communist. Communist would dictate everyone gets paid the same and all jobs are for the government. In reality, China's economy works like a capitalist, but all business's get approved by the government and are overseen by the government, but not run for the most part. This is why off shoring is booming there.

These economic rewards China is reeping relies on the government not screwing things up by trying to move back to communism or more represive control. This is something of a carrot on the stick moving China toward capitalism. While I dislike China's past actions and politics, it is showing promise in improvement through its economy.

If you own GOOG or YHOO, be it directly or through funds administered by a financial institution, then you are just as guilty as the Chinese.

Legally...no. Liability for illegeal and wrong behavior by a company can not be passed on to stock holders. Morally, maybe. If you own stock and vote on company actions in a moral way, then I don't see you at fault. Some smuck with 1 stock in google can't stop the entire company by himself. He can vote for what is right, but don't blame him for not being able to stop the entire company.

The best times Russia has ever seen was under Stalin.

If you consider the killing of 20 million of his own people the best times... Yeah, dictatorships run smoothly. Any bumps meet feirce and brutal reactions. That doesn't mean things are going well though. Yes, a transition period can be rough to democracy and capitalism. However, it can work as we have seen in many other countries (Germany is a good example).

 

[Sculli]

It was either no google or slightly censored google. That is the only choice China would allow. Given those two choices, even a censored version is better than nothing. The censored version still has the ability for information to slip through...there is no chance though without any google at all.

Let's just agree that this decidion was not made with the Chinese users as primary focus, but with Google's worldwide market share as primary focus. China is a huge market, arguably the largest in the world as the Chinese will start to move out of peasantry and manufacturing and will establish a middle-class.

Google could have said: Fuck China, we don't need you!

But of course, that would be a bad business model. Instead the acceptance of censure ensures the continious profit. There is nothing that will convince me that Google's descision was not to 100% based on making money.

Liability for illegeal and wrong behavior by a company can not be passed on to stock holders. Morally, maybe. If you own stock and vote on company actions in a moral way, then I don't see you at fault. Some smuck with 1 stock in google can't stop the entire company by himself. He can vote for what is right, but don't blame him for not being able to stop the entire company.

I think all of us all too often focus on what's legal and what's not, forgetting that it doesn't take laws to make one decide on what's right and what's not.

I agree and I disagree with the statement on what one person can do.

One person can change the world. It has been done in the past, and it will be done again. I agree that one GOOG shareholder can probably not change the way GOOG does business, but we won't know till someone actually tries. The problem is that as long as the stock is up, people couldn't care any less as to just exactly how GOOG is making money.

Social responsibility is simply not practical.

Re: Stalin
One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic.
The country ran efficiently, at the expense of 20 million lives. To some that is acceptable, especially given the overpopulation we are facing.

Re: Germany
Transition isn't worth talking about in regards to Germany. East Germany was annexed by West Germany. That was that.

 

[Rones]

But of course, that would be a bad business model. Instead the acceptance of censure ensures the continious profit. There is nothing that will convince me that Google's descision was not to 100% based on making money.

Well that is one view. Although I ask this. Which is better for the common Chinese citizen? A world with no google or a world with a slightly censored google? If google only cared about money, they wouldn't have fought this for as long as they did and would have just immidiately gave into China's requirement, it would have been cheaper and probably improved the deal.

As for the stock, I hit both legal and moral responsbility:

If you own stock and vote on company actions in a moral way, then I don't see you at fault.

Where is the problem with that?

The country ran efficiently, at the expense of 20 million lives. To some that is acceptable, especially given the overpopulation we are facing.

If by efficiently you mean an economy that bombed without protest...then yes it ran efficiently. Mass killings are not a moral solution for overpopulation, nor even an effective solution. To say this just after you criticize the morality of google is rediculous.

Transition isn't worth talking about in regards to Germany. East Germany was annexed by West Germany. That was that.

I was actually refering to the transition of West Germany under Hitler to West Germany post WWII. If you really want, I can look up many more examples of successful and prosperous transitions of countries from dictatorships to democracies with strong capitalist markets.

 

[Shaunessy]

Like china is really all that repressed anyway. In a country where people have died playing video games for too long, I don't really consider them on the top of the "ruled by an iron fist" community. They are the biggest capitalists on the planet right now, they will do anything for money, and I believe that the forecasted year is 2012 for China to take over the US on the GNP list. They are cheap labor but they also have a lower cost of living than the US or UK, so it averages out.

On the cuban embargo. I believe that when a certain person dies down there the US will lift the embargo.

 

[Isotope]

Visited China for a week on Nov. 15, 2005.
Things I found:

• Tons of beggers on the streets, both young & old. They didn't care I didn't know the language, just kept sadly getting in way pleading in a language I couldn't understand for some RMB. I didn't give anything to anyone but those that looked old or severely disabled to where they couldn't actually get a real job.
• Street merchants shouting the same repetitive mental recording & fighting to toss little paper advertisements in your baggage or hand to you. "Watch? DVD?"
• Except for in the heart of Shanghai, most of the stores I seen looked like a teenager was running it & had taken all the posters from their bedroom & tossed them around in a weird array. There was garbage on the floors too (not from food).
• A lot of goods they try & sell they make themselves or have a group that makes them & they are cheap immitations. I even watched a channel in my hotel room showing how to make some anime character keychains & cosplay stuff.
• They LOVE... I mean FREAKING LOVE..CHICKEN!!! The 2 biggest food chains they got there are McDonalds & their favorite... KFC!!! Their McDonalds sells mostly chicken. They had like 1 or 2 burger combos, so basically it's just the invert of what we're used to. Plus with the whole Avian Flu scare I avoided chicken as best I could & they would actually give me a free 5 piece nugget wherever I went that sold chicken nuggets, even some of the little small stores there.
• There was a flea market overrun with American businessmen who were there to make some quick money, buying the good stuff after wearing down the merchants (mostly watches, suitcases & travel baggage), which wasn't all that hard. A female merchant came running down the isle, almost knocking me over, shouting to a man that had left "Sir! Sir! You want (price)? Yes? Come! Name your price!"
• A supermarket I visited was like 3 floors, each the size of your local supermarket (excluding super Wal-Marts). To go up or down there was a conveyor belt like the cashiers have but bigger and you had to stand on it with your cart full on a slant & keep your balance.... Because each section of China has it's own sub-culture they just carry all different kinds of food, hence the size of the supermarket. They had some of the weirdest shit as you could imagine...stuff that looked like it was just fished out of the ocean & washed off, but still with it's exoskeleton & eyes.. eyes that peered at you in an eery way... /cringe. Their rice bin was FUCKING HUGE!!! Lots of scoopers in that bin... Their candy section was huge too, they had those clear cylinder containers full of stuff too climbing up to the ceiling & more big bins full of smaller wrapped candies.
• I, being the lazy American I am, was tired as hell traveling with 4 Chinese girls... I was so ashamed & embarrassed. >.< They walk on foot mostly. Their parking lots are filled with massive amounts of bicycles & motor-scooters. Over there scooters are the big thing, I seen lots of business men riding them in suits. There are no emission standards so vehicle exhaust OMG I thought I was gonna die! I took a lot of taxis & subway trains to get around. If you go there, be aware...letting a female, old woman, woman w/kids or whoever go before you is not an appreciated courtesy. People bump you without a second thought. If you don't take the opportunity to get yourself somewhere or go through a subway terminal, etc. when it's your turn, they figure you just didn't want it bad enough so you lose.
• People of all ages & sizes had their cellphones out all over the place text messaging. Nearly all younger people used prepaid simcards in their GSM phones. I bought a GSM phone for my Cingular service that was manufactured to be unlocked already specifically for this trip. I bought a prepaid simcard from China Unicom or something like that, there was a arctic scene with a penguin on the simcard. I could understand why so many text messaged rather then actually making a call, there was very low signal just about everywhere I went. The phone I took & still use to this day is a Samsung SGH-e730, one kick-ass phone (just needs a mem card slot...has 92MB memory already though).
• Also they don't keep their food quite as cold as we do in our supermarkets & stores so it doesn't taste too fresh. Finding milk was a pain too, especially chocolate milk. Chinese just don't like milk it seems, all 4 girls turned up their noses & stuck out their tongues when I mentioned it. When I drank it I grossed them out, the milk aftereffect later, grossed me out. Their milk could only be found in very small cartons too.
• I went upstairs above some of the poorly setup small shops & found a internet cafe sorta. There was a bar, round tables with stools setup around the columns that held up the ceiling, with laptops on the tabletops. Most booths had a laptop computer stationed & a few spots had desktops. I ordered a pizza... I got... well I dunno wtf I got but it was triangular & had something laced over it like how'd you'd see on some deserts. One of the tables had a hexagonal hole in the moddle where a stool was under the table & a hotplate was on it. A big divided metal bowl went on the hotplate & had red liquid in one side, white in the other. You got plates of veggies, meats, etc. & got to dip it. Something I learned later was that I didn't eat that much & they kept bugging me to eat more....what I learned after was that refusing food was very insulting, even if they didn't want to listen to you that you were full. Those girls ate a LOT & were so tiny...
• Girls stared, giggled, smiled & waived. Guys stared, glared & some gave you eyes that said "Get out of my country filthy American, you cannot have our women!"
• The hotel did of coarse try to cheat me & the girls caught them in the act.
• Westernization in many areas like the center of Shanghai have created mixed feelings it seemed between those that dressed to impress (my lord /drool) & those that remained traditional, wearing brown old-world footwear.
• Most girls, even in their 20's, still owned & would purchase dolls. The ones that don't dress to impress in more modern clothing or sexy clothing were VERY innocent things.
• The television was crammed with a lot of advertisements for odd-ball products. Their version of our Cartoon Network (not actually CN though..) was more commercials then anything, however at one point did show you a time elapsed tutorial of how on some computer program a high quality anime poster is made.

 

[evanos]

The reason that everything seems to be from China is because production costs are at rock bottom prices. Very little safety in many factories (though changing) cuts costs, also extremely low tax prices and much less overhead costs that exist in "modern" industrial economies.
One consequence of this is that more and more jobs get shipped overseas to lower the "bottom line" to compete with other companies that have already moved to cut costs. When everyday people buy products they generally want to get the cheapest product that they can. Many economists would say that this leads to lowering of local minumum wage because they have to match this competition. China currently is the largest exporter of goods in the world.The US currently has a 17 Billion dollar trade deficit with China. The EU also has a 78.5 billion Euro trade deficit with China.
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html#2006 - Some politicians have proposed to embardo/other drastic options to change this deficit, but in a global economy that is really not feisable without making other major institutional changes.
lot more to say, but gotta go eat.

 

[Sculli]

Which is better for the common Chinese citizen? A world with no google or a world with a slightly censored google?

Personally I think a world with no Google would be better for them. A censored Google creates contempt, a la "well yeah, it's censored, but we can still use it, sort of". A world without Google would raise questions, and in my opinion ultimately discontent:
"Why no Google?"
"Because Google didn't want to put up with censorship."
"grumble grumble, fuck the government, grumble"

If you own stock and vote on company actions in a moral way, then I don't see you at fault.

Where is the problem with that?

Legally you are not at fault, we have established that. Of course you are morally at fault, how couldn't you be. Your money continiously supports activities that are not acceptable based on your morals (since you did vote against them). By keeping your stock you choose your own profit over your own morals, as you do have the option to sell your stock if decisions do not go your way.

If by efficiently you mean an economy that bombed without protest...then yes it ran efficiently. Mass killings are not a moral solution for overpopulation, nor even an effective solution. To say this just after you criticize the morality of google is rediculous.

I am not saying that mass killings are a solution for overpopulation, but considering the situation from a dictator's point of view it is perfectly acceptable to kill 20M if you have another 160M to work with. BTW, the 20M deathtoll is about as accurate as anyone's guess. Numbers vary widely from 4M to 50M.

In addition it is not like those were mass killings, many deaths occured in forced labor camps where people died because of the conditions they were living in. While it certainly never was the intention to save those people, thier death was at times more of a burden as things just didn't get done because not enough people were around to do the work (i.e. Kolyma mines etc).

I think it's pretty undisputed that in the first 10 years of Stalin's rule the country achieved huge economic growth, which some argue did continue throughout his rule and even peaked after his death where people were temporarily putting in extra effort "for comrade Stalin".

was actually refering to the transition of West Germany under Hitler to West Germany post WWII.

I am sorry, but that just made me LOL. What transition? Germany was bombed into the stone age. Allies snatched all the good brains and applied them to their own programs. Then there was the Marshall plan. This "transition" is not something that happened on it's own, nor could it have happened unassisted.

In regards to China we could argue that free trade with them is just one big Marshall plan without that they call it that way. If we do that, we are still missing the part of bombing China into submission.

 

[Kire]

wow just wanted to know why not your views etc thought they are good -_-

 

[Rones]

Personally I think a world with no Google would be better for them. A censored Google creates contempt, a la "well yeah, it's censored, but we can still use it, sort of". A world without Google would raise questions, and in my opinion ultimately discontent:
"Why no Google?"
"Because Google didn't want to put up with censorship."
"grumble grumble, fuck the government, grumble"

You have read1984 I imagine. Questions don't get asked without a spark. Google, even a slightly censored google, provides that spark. Why do you think the Chinese have remained so complacent until the last few decades? Because information has boomed and it is leaking in past the censors. A censored information source is better than no information source at all. Censored creates the possibility of a leak...where as there is no chance when you have nothing at all. They wouldn't even know what google is otherwise.

A more likely conversation would be:
"Why no Google?"
"What is Google?"
"Something the government is protecting us from I think. Our government is working well isn't it?"

Google's censoring isn't massive either. It targets a few select terms mainly related to the Tienem Square massacre. It is still possible to find anti Chinese sites through it. The real censoring is on a level above google. The Chinese internet google is being implimented on is already heavily censored to the point that it is practically irrelevent whether google was censored at all.

Of course you are morally at fault, how couldn't you be. Your money continiously supports activities that are not acceptable based on your morals (since you did vote against them). By keeping your stock you choose your own profit over your own morals, as you do have the option to sell your stock if decisions do not go your way.

I can see we are looking at this from two completly different perspectivese. I'm looking at this in the way most democratic groups work. If you vote against some immoral action by the government, are you morally at fault for what your government does? If you voted against it, I would say no. Same concept with a company stock. If your tiny percentage of the company you own through stock is against the action and votes that way, I don't see you as morally responsible for the wrongs done.

You are saying the same thing, but you want people to vote with their money. That doesn't work in a capitalist society and honestly wouldn't work. You can't organize people enough to boycott companies for being immoral. Stock prices function indepedent of moral action (short of breaking the law such as Enron and massive media events). That is why you vote with your shares you hold instead of just buying a different stock. Which is more likely to bring change, having everyone who feels it is wrong buy a different stock or have all of them buy that company stock and vote against the immoral action. Companies act to please their shareholders. If you are unhappy and a shareholder, they must change to please you. There will be no change if the only people holding their shares agree with the action or don't care.

As for Stalin..I would put Hitler as a more humane leader. Hitler's genocide was actually smaller than Stalins. We criticize Hitler as being the devil...yet Stalin did the same thing on a larger scale.

Successful democratic transition.
History of China's transition to capitlism.
Not going to post more links because it would be too much reading, unless you want them.

 

[Kire]

wow you are now moving onto reds just because i found some things what where special to certain areas actally imported i find that amzing like the ridill fourm i made on KI its now gone into 2 mithras chatting lol
well China is not t he worst senseor then russia was that was bad times there