Do not buy ANYTHING from China
August 15th, 2007I’ve been saying it for years now. Do not buy anything from China. Now, Mattel is recalling tons of toys because the Chinese are still using lead paints.
You probably haven’t heard of this because the American media rarely covers anything important outside of its own borders besides natural disasters, but Panamanians have reported 365 deaths due to poisoned cold medicine from China.
I already wrote about the toxic pet food that causes kidney failure and a slow, painful death. I hope none of your pets ate any pet food from China. And I already reported the poisoned toothpaste that was coming from China. What more do we need to report before Americans start taking this stuff seriously?
The good news is America is finally getting her head out of her ass when it comes to pet food. The FDA recently banned wheat gluten from China. Why not go all the way and stop getting pet food, period? There are over 200 nations on the planet Earth, why buy from China? This is just stupid.
I’m not even talking about the trade imbalance, the unfair trade practices, the sweat shops, the billions in debt we owe Chinese banks, etc. I’m just talking about toxic chemicals in the food, medicine, and toothpaste, and lead paint on their toys.
Many of you have children. We all know kids put things in their mouths. Lead paint causes mental retardation in children. So do not buy any toys made in China. Before buying a toy, verify what country it’s made in.
Alternatives
This is what I don’t get. Mexico has tons of good farmland. So do most of the countries in South America. Why can’t we do more trade with them? They’re all good people. We complain about illegal immigration. Don’t you think if they had jobs in their own countries, they’d be less likely to have to come here in search of jobs?
Hey Z!
I have worked with Chinese and Mexican factories, and from what I have seen, that is just never going to happen. It is illegal to fire people in Mexico. I will let you spin it out from there.
Basically, in Mexico you get 10,000 widgets and every one has a different issue. In China they are consistent. Every one of the 10,000 widgets will be correct or will have the same problem.
Aren’t these QC problems? The American (or international) companies who are developing and importing these products without knowing exactly what is going into them are just as responsible or more responsible.
Sourcing in China has its issues. Their environmental record sucks (although they seem to be improving). They are sucking up the world’s resources at an incredible rate (thank them for $3 gas).
But wherever we go for cheap goods, we are going to face the same problems. The problem isn’t China. It is rampant mindless consumerism, path-of-least-resistance business practices, and a culture of the disposable. And you aren’t going to move that without a big ass lever and a place to stand. But I’ll be rooting for you.
well yonderincarp has informed me of something i did not know regarding mexican practice.
i’d also add that i am somewhat torn. i certainly think given recent issues there needs to be some serious boycoot of goods because consistently churning out that kind of poison has no excuse. at the same time i have friends who live in china and tellme that if we refuse to trade at all we loose any leverage to bring pressure upon china regarding human rights. i guess we need to pick and choose wisely. as for toys…legos are one of the few toys not made in china, and they are terrific. i still love legos. heheh
Morning Z. Lets see here. I had a great thought while reading and now have forgotten half my tangent. LOL..I just woke up so my mind isnt fully awake. But anyway. They had on the news yesterday about this. They had this one guy saying they had to spend like 900 dollars a toy or something like that to test a toy. Its ridiculous. But they will do what they want to do and harm our children and we havent done a dang thing to them as far as I know. But you are right if we would trade with other countries more I doubt that we would have illegal immigrants here. You know that doenst even bother me if they would just learn our language and work instead of all the drug trafficking and not speaking English. Or acting like they dont. Its just complicated.
Unfortunately I don’t think the solution is that easy. I don’t think we (the US) can simply stop trading with China because we owe them billions of dollars. If we pulled out of trade agreements, they might just recall all that debt and then we’d really be in trouble.
Laura - I’m referring more on a personal level than gov’t level. If consumers stopped buying, then they’ll be forced to actually put out safe products.
Boycotts work. Just look how boycotts completely turned around the tuna industry’s practices when it came to dolphins.
Tweety - I do think that if we traded more with Mexico, we could build a middle-class there and we won’t have the problem with illegal immigration. We need to start helping them build jobs.
Lime - I used to be a hard-core Lego junkie. When time permits, I will be one again. They’re toys not only for kids, but for adults. And they’re private, so they don’t have the pressures to cut costs (and quality) that a public company does, so yes, they’re not made in China.
Yonder - I’ve always been anti-communist not only for Human Rights abuses, occasional genocide, no Freedom, etc., but also for environmental reasons. Communism has the worst track record when it comes to environmental abuse.
The #1 problem with Mexico for the past 100 years has been corruption. If we build a middle-class in Mexico, we’ll see corruption go way down. That’s why we need to trade more with them and less with China. It’s not pulling a lever all at once, but a progression, baby steps - one product and/or industry at a time.
However, on a personal basis, we’ve begun our boycott of Chinese goods several years back, with exceptions when we have absolutely no choice. But I’ll never buy food products for the family or our dogs from China, with no exceptions.
As for not being able to fire anyone, yes, that is a problem. If someone doesn’t produce, they need to be fired. It hurts everyone when you can’t fire (especially fellow employees who have to work that guy’s job as well as their own).
A friend of mine actually thinks it’s deliberate and that China is essentially trying to kill us off. I’m not sure they’re going about it the most efficient way, but…
I was talking about this with someone yesterday, and she pointed out that we can hardly blame the Chinese for taking advantage of a situation that we put them in by farming out production to China. That’s true. We were dumb enough to trust them. But I don’t buy Chinese products anyway, in protest of human-rights abuses and their suppression of freedom of speech.
It’s ridiculous to buy ANYTHING from any country that doesn’t doesn’t share the same health and safety guidelines that we have.
I completely respect your personal boycott. Realistically, that is the recourse available.
With you on communism. In terms of human rights and the environment, individual liberties, et al. And if you are boycotting for those reasons, I tip my hat. Plus there are a lot of shady things the Chinese have done economically… extreme government manipulation of business, tying the RMB to the $, etc, corruption, human rights violations, etc.
But if the issue is the current production problems, unless there is something I don’t know, it is unfair to blame the country of China for factories’ mistakes. Likely Americans designed the products, and spec’d the materials. American QC should have caught the errors. I am no huge proponent of Chinese factories, they gave me quite a few headaches. But let’s be fair.
Also, in regard to Mexico… the corruption there is ancient and deeply wound into the culture. The idea that we can walk in there, give them some orders and Western civilization will suddenly take hold isn’t terribly reasonable. To do business there you would have to fix the government at all levels from federal to local. My former boss was from Mexico. He shipped all his family’s belongings down there once when he was moving back temporarily to run a factory. Mysteriously the containers disappeared. His father and brother were kidnapped. It turned out they had been ‘arrested’ by officials from a town none of them had ever been to. To release them he would have had to pay the ‘fines’ of hundreds of thousands of dollars. He fought it through the court system until finally the federal judge required him to pay $10,000 to him to rule in their favor. If he didn’t pay there was no appeal. And I could tell you story after story of production problems…
Basically, Mexico can handle manufacturing certain handcrafted items quite well, but Europe is generally better at this. Mass uniform production… not a chance in hell.
Yes I agree with you.
There’s a really good article in this week’s Tribune about a family who tried to boycott Chinese goods for a year. They published a book about their experience. FYI in case you’re interested:
ZS, just sent you some traffic - http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=38&threadid=2087045&enterthread=y
Kathleen - I wouldn’t be surprised. They have nukes pointed at us.
SME - Definitely good reasons. I didn’t even get to those reasons yet. I was just focused on how dangerous their crap is.
Jay - Well said.
Yonder - It would take practically a miracle to change things there. The corruption and inefficiency is astounding. However, morally, we should be helping our neighbors before people who point nukes at us. I firmly believe it’s not impossible to help them change.
Tweety - Thanks.
Laura - I’ve read a bunch of articles on them and I read part of that book at Barnes and Noodle. Yes, it can be frustrating, and sometimes you have no choice, but the food is the easy part. Buy local.
Sygyzy - Thanks for the plug. I like what a few of them said.