Unraveling “Made in China”

Carcinogenic shrimp? Lead-laced children’s toys? Toxic toothpaste? Defective car tires? We are shocked, shocked to see that “Made in China” goods turn out to be substandard, dangerous, or even deadly. Yet the stories keep coming, unraveling like the end of a “Made in China” sweater.

Who knew that Chinese goods are cheap for a reason? How could we have been expected to connect the dots between an unaccountable government more than willing to use force against its own people and against Tibetans, corrupt and unelected officials out to enrich themselves, a political-judicial system that protects the powerful and censors free speech, and a development strategy aimed at making money above all else, even at the expense of killing people and wrecking the environment?

Yes, we’ve heard of Chinese children dying from tainted antibiotics or fake baby formula. We vaguely recall corrupt Chinese officials routinely using the coercive power of the state to suppress workers’ rights. We’ve heard that seven of the ten most polluted cities in the world are Chinese. Maybe we know that Chinese environmental activists are beaten by government-sponsored thugs and thrown in jail on trumped-up charges. We’ve read that China’s newest high-speed railway is unsafe because of fake construction material. And the well-informed among us know how China is treating Tibet as its colony, dumping its excess population while stripping the land of resources to feed Chinese factories. But the idea that the dark side of modern China could be exported to our stores along with cheap consumer goods? Unthinkable!

But should we really be surprised that a government committing slow genocide in Tibet and supporting quick genocide in Darfur also presides over a system that looks the other way when corners are cut and ordinary people get hurt? Is it really so shocking once we unravel the connections? Yes it is in China’s overall economic interest to reform. But should we really believe that the Chinese Communist Party can fundamentally reform Chinese industries when it cannot root out massive endemic corruption in its own midst?

Many Tibetans have been calling for a boycott of “Made in China” for years. Perhaps we should have listened. Perhaps we should have better considered the repression in Tibet, because China’s treatment of Tibet is like the proverbial canary in the coal mine that shows what evils the Chinese government is truly capable of under all the facade.

Unfortunately, the problems with “Made in China” goods are not unforeseeable flukes. Rather, they’re exactly what one should expect from the government, economic system, and development strategy of China today. The recent unraveling of “Made in China” is entirely predictable. As with the mounting pressure surrounding the Beijing 2008 Olympics, we’re seeing how the Chinese government is utterly failing when the system it has created is held up to close scrutiny. As the Beijing Olympics approach and as China gets closer to its big “coming out party,” expect more stories to emerge of the dark side of life in China and Tibet.