Cheap Chinese Exports Threatens World Peace!

[Finbar]

For the whole story - read it here.

Cheap Chinese Imports

"High oil prices and cheap clothing from China helped push the U.S. trade deficit to a record $61 billion in February, the government said on Tuesday in a report that led some analysts to trim their forecasts for the U.S. economic growth."

The article goes on to state: "A slight rise in exports during February to a record $100.5 billion was overwhelmed by a larger jump in imports to a record $161.5 billion as cheap clothing poured in from China and oil prices surged higher."

The article further states: "...the rising trade deficit...blamed for the loss of 3 million U.S. jobs since 2000."

Some members in Congress are blaming the Chinese government's pegging their currency to the U.S. dollar's value.

Some members of Congress are calling for a bill that would impose a 27% tariff on cheaply made Chinese products.

The "cheap Chinese products" refers to the cheap prices and the cheap quality of Chinese made products.

Even for members of countries other than the U.S.; this is a rising alarm for all peoples that cherish freedom.

The Chinese government's policies are an act of financial warfare.

Unabated, this financial warfare will undoubtedly spill over into the theater of battle for all our sons and daughters to die in another distant land.

China's armaments from Russia are increasing.

Read this if you wish to make a difference in the world in which we live.

The exportation of genocide to Tibet and the two million Tibetan dead; should sound alarms for all peoples that cherish freedom and life on the planet Earth.

Besides exporting cheaply-priced Chinese products and cheap quality Chinese products - China's next best export is genocide.

Will your next purchase fund genocide?

Two million Tibetan dead can not speak out - will you?

All My Best,
Fin

 

[UncleFester]

How long till this one's locked?

 

[McGizmo]

Whether this thread gets locked or not, once enough of the world's manufacturing base and infrastructure has moved to China, I would guess the prices for Chinese goods will come up! Of course by that time we will likely continue to buy from them at higher prices as we will have closed our own production facilities. Heck it's been going on for some time now! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif

Yup, I bet this one goes UG at some point........

"Why pay over $100 for a SF when you can get a Q3 for under $50!" /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif

It may be that when Mag's new plant goes on line, we might see one type of solution when it comes to a product we are familiar with. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif

********************

"May you live in interesting times."

 

[Finbar]

[ QUOTE ]
UncleFester said:
How long till this one's locked?

[/ QUOTE ]

Who can say Grasshopper?

"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." Fredrick Douglas - American Abolitionist.

"No." (By uttering that single syllable when a bus driver demanded that she, as a black woman, surrender her seat to a white man, Rosa Parks sparked a 13-month boycott that ended Jim Crow in the Montgomery, Alabama bus system. The protest inspired 42 other local protests against segregation within a year.) Rosa Parks, December 1, 1955

"I never imagined the struggle would be short or easy." Nelson Mandela

"A true soldier does not argue, as he marches, how success is going to be ultimately achieved. But he is confident that if he only plays his humble part well, somehow or other the battle will be won. It is in that spirit that every one of us should act. It is not given to us to know the future. But it is given to everyone of us to know how to do our part well." Mahatma Gandhi

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little." Edmund Burke

I cast a stone into the calmed ocean - and a tiny ripple spreads.

Fin

 

[James S]

The Chinese government is living on borrowed time. They think that they can continue to provide an increasingly modern lifestyle for their people and yet continue to run sweatshops to grab huge portions of the worlds markets. But they cannot sustain that. The government thinks that people are a cheap resource, they have an awful lot of them and have been treating them like that for centuries. But the people are rapidly learning to aspire to more than that. Even if the bulk of it is consumerism and cellphones and whatnot. those things will be the downfall of the current system there.

The amount of time you can continue to coddle a technology based city system by paying for it with the labor of the uneducated peasant from the country side is limited.

Yes, it would be nice if something we did would make a difference, but i would argue that the best thing you can do is buy their goods. Send them the money they need to have a life. It may start at a nickel an hour, but they will go through the same thing we did in this country and their wages will increase and the government will become beholden to them for maintaining good relations with other countries necessary for good trade and a good life, and less interested in outdated ideology. This will happen because their people will demand it. It just takes time,

If you don't buy from them then what? The factory workers instead of organizing and demanding better working conditions and wages like happened here, will go back to their villages and the easily controlled agrarian feudalistic society will continue for another millennia.

Chinas culture and society haven't changed much in a very long time, now it's changing very rapidly due in large part to the jobs and money created by what we buy from them.

 

[NewBie]

Well, America's thirst for cheap items has transformed many asian island Nations, just like it will China.

Sorry, but the sheer size of their population is an untapped potential in the world, and a see a very dominating power rising forth, like sand in a desert, conquering all.

China is rapidly becoming rich and more capable by the moment, and acquiring skills and knowledge as we speak.

Clinton stirred these winds of change from many fronts, all at the same time. Carter also played a minor role, creating the breeze which Clinton turned into a mighty gale.

Corporations such as Walmart, Texas Instruments, Maxim/Dallas Semiconductor, Linear Technologies, National Semiconductor, and and and companies are building their most advanced and very latest factories in China, training workers and engineers.

Additionally Clinton virtually gave China many decades worth of military technology and capability. Which China is busily modernizing their forces with.

Once China is spun up, they will be a truely amazing power to deal with.

Of course there are all those who "care" for the environment. China is busily cutting down vast forests, squandering huge amounts of their resources, Nature be dammed. Its getting so bad that huge clouds of yellow dust can be seen in satellite images stretching across the entire Pacific, even reaching the Northwest of the US. And you should see the strip mining activities, it makes some of the stuff here in the US look like we were playing in the dirt.
Yet you don't see any calls for boycotts....

Meanwhile there is a massive brain drain here in the US that nobody sees, or chooses to ignore. Engineers by the thousands are being forced to take jobs in other sectors. And they are not being replaced, nor is our education system producing young men and women with the skills necessary.

Sorry, but I think that ripple came back as a mighty Tsunami when it was reflected back from distant shores. Especially once fed by our own insatiable thirst and appetite.

 

[jtr1962]

China will be the predominent world power of the 21st century. There is little doubt in my mind of that. The US could have held its lead if not for the massive failure of the educational system to produce graduates skilled in science and engineering, and the massive failure of business to provide enough jobs even for those few that the schools do turn out thanks to massive cutbacks in R&D. It's a sad turn of events when more people are going into law than engineering simply because they can't earn a good living in engineering. If any one thing is responsible for the eventual downfall of the US and the rise of China, it is the inability of our leaders to see past the next quarter. Not so with China. It is virtually ingrained in Asian culture to plan decades ahead, even if those currently doing the groundwork won't live to benefit from it.

 

[gregw]

Fin,

You have absolutely NO IDEA what you're talking about. You've obviously never been to China nor do you seem to even know ANYTHING about chinese culture. Reading 2nd and 3rd hand accounts of "free tibet" propaganda isn't going to educate you very much about what China is all about.

Boycotting chinese goods isn't even going to be possible since a lot of large US corporations now have factories here. e.g. Dell and IBM PCs and Laptops are now almost 100% made in china. I'd bet the PC you're using right now was probably manufactured in China. Trying to buy a PC that doesn't have any made in china parts is virtually IMPOSSIBLE now.

 

[code09]

agreed with greg...being a chinese myself, i kinda feel this post to be slighty insulting....yet highly interesting at the same time /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/popcorn.gif

 

[3rd_shift]

Hey Finbar. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink2.gif

Let me get you a drink downstairs. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/happy23.gif
http://cpfunderground.americanconservatives.net/CPFUnderground/

Go ahead and follow the instructions on getting set up to go down there.
It took me only the better part of 5 minutes to be ready to rock'n'roll there.
I'm halfway intertested in reading more on this downstairs.
:salute:

 

[Finbar]

By reading through some of your comments posted here, I can see that some have not been troubled to read the links provided.

Free Download of the following salient points:

* The suppression of democracy and freedom
*Wholesale and indiscriminate use of the death penalty
*Commercial harvesting of transplant organs of executed prisoners
*Denial of basic rights to Chinese workers and farmers
*Nationwide forced abortions and sterilizations
*Sweeping and brutal repression of all religions
*Criminal psychiatric abuse of political prisoners
*Routine torture of prisoners
*Military occupation and genocide in Tibet
*Draconian repression in East Turkestan
*Military expansion and aggression
*World's tighest Internet censorship
*The largest dealer of "Weapons of Mass Destruction" to rogue states

Yes, I am insulted also. I am insulted that more individuals that profess to cherish: freedom of religon, freedom of the press, freedom to vote and freedom from oppression are not speaking out in protest.

Am I one Westerner that wishes to impose ideals that many in the free world claim; upon the Chinese system of Confucian values? The sage himself is on record as saying, "Let humanity be your highest standard."

Confucius believed that rule should be through moral authority and not by violenece and oppression.

The links provided illustrate the extreme effectiveness of boycotts in other areas. This is why the method was adopted for this cause.

The success of other boycotts has drawn public support and media attention, and politicians join the stampede. They would not be politicians if they did not.

In the book, "Buying The Dragon's Teeth" - the chapter, "World's Largest Supplier of Nuclear Weapons to Rogue States" should compell many to think twice about this campaign being "propaganda".

Wal-Mart is the single largest importer of Chinese made-products, buying $10 billion worth of merchandise every year.

"Charlie Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee reports that Wal-Mart's harsh labor policies were "actually lowering the standards in China, slashing wages and benefits, imposing long, mandatory overtime shifts, while tolerating the arbitrary firing of workers who even dare discuss factory conditions."

"One particular section of the report on the Qin Shi handbag factory describes:
*14-hour shifts, 7 days a week, 30 days a month;
*Average take-home pay of 3 cents an hour, $3.10 for a 98-hour workweek;
*One worker earning 36 cents for an entire month's work;
*46 percent of the workers earning nothing at all and actually in debt to the company;
*Workers held as indentured servants, with identification documents confiscated, only allowed to leave the factory 1 hour a day;
*800 workers fired for fighting for their basic rights.

"Protest"?

"In fact, even the modest attempts to organize labor in China have met with harsh crackdowns and imprisonment and executions of labor leaders."

To free Tibet, the citizens of China must also be freed.

Those of Chinese descent should be at least concerned for their fellow countrymen, if not for the bodies of the Tibetan dead.

Yes, I am an American. What actually is an American? I am a descendant of: Irish, French, English and Native American ancestors. I am an American. "Out of many comes one." Similarly, out of one comes many. I am a citizen of the world. My genetic heritage knows no bounds.

Besides, we are all of one race - Homo sapiens.

It is mind-numbing to see one having to rise to the defense of ending genocide. I would think that this cause would be of no opposition.

The phrase, "Never again!" is so easily forgotten with the passage of so few decades.

All My Best,
Fin

 

[SJACKAL]

I am Singaporean, althought I am neither born in China nor held citizenship there, I am Chinese and I can't help but feel hurt by your post, which talks nothing but the fault of the Chinese.

Which country or race have no faults? All had and have their own. Why must you take your war with the Chinese here in CPF, where we are a peaceful community brought together by similar interests regardless of race and nationality.

 

[Fat_Tony]

Well said, James S.

Fin, your 1st post did sound kind of hostile. After reading your most recent post, however, I think that I have a better idea of what is concerning you. I really have to disagree with you, however, on the best solution to the problem of human rights violations in China. Boycotting products made in China may or may not harm government officials, but I know one thing, it will harm the average Chinese citizen. Since the intent of a truly effective boycott is to change the political policies of a country/organization by inflicting economic pain, I doubt that boycotting goods made in China would have any effect on the policies of the Chinese government. Why is that? 2 reasons, really. 1.) The pain that is inflicted by the boycott has to be spread across a large swath of the population, and 2.) the people feeling the pain have to be able to influence their government to change. I do not believe that China's middle-class is large enough yet for your strategy to work, and I sincerely doubt that the government of China is responsive enough to the "will of the people" yet, to heed their demands. I think that the best strategy to pursue at this point is to allow the continued economic development of China, with the hope that the creation of enough new jobs will lead to the development of a large middle-class. (Which is what should happen). Even though the internet in China is censored, the emerging middle-class in China should eventually have nearly unfettered access to it (happened already?), along with a host of other information technology that we take for granted in the west. This should give the Chinese people access to enough information, and the accompanying economic clout, to force change in their government.

Corruption is always greatest in poor countries, Fin. As a country grows richer, the citizens almost always demand increased fairness, and a more level playing field. Furthermore, its better that the Chinese change China, because they feel that change is necessary, rather than having someone else (the U.S) risk seeming like a 'cultural imperialist'. Just my $ .02.

 

[HighLight]

Since the whole world purchases Chinese sourced products at one time or another then Finbar must have a beef against the whole world! I know that I'm typing this on a Chinese made keyboard and I certainly don't support genocide. Finbar may I suggest you step back, take a deep breath and try to take a more balanced and reasoned outlook to the situation in China as you see it. It may or may not be as bleak as you think but I guarantee you will accomplish more and garner more support for the way you percieve the situation.

 

[IlluminatingBikr]

I think history shows that for a country to change its ways, the people of the country have to want that. Boycotting China isn't really going to change much of anything. Even if the whole US boycotted all Chinese products, I doubt things would change very much in China. If the Chinese people are being treated unfairly, they need to collectively step up against that.

 

[Mags]

Damn straight. Our economy is down in sh!t's creek right now, and a lot of it is due to the dumping of cheap products from china. I wish we can just put on a nice protective tariff on them, like the good old days. (long agooooo) By the way, some people think I am chinese from the picture in the "post your self picture" thread, but I am korean.

 

[taiji]

I think that most of our problems that we like to blame other countries for stem from the greedy few who want more profit at the expense of the workers, comsumers and the gullibles. To stay competative in any market (to make money) means that one needs to have low overhead - and that is what China now provides. But not for long. Just look at America. We wasted and polluted to get where we are now today. China is only following our footstep.

 

[3rd_shift]

Nuwai Q3's are Chinese made.
The ones I ordered and sold were made in China and imported from Hong Kong. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

I still have a few left.
I also have a few red 3 watt leds on the way from someone in China.
Not sure what to do with them when I get them to be honest.
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif

 

[McGizmo]

I don't see the issues in terms of racial but rather governmental and economic in basis. I am in no position to pass judgment either as I can at best go by what little I have read and experienced. I do know that the US is moving further and further from any semblance of self sufficiency and we are moving away from industry and production. It is a global economy and that's a reality.
Our industry and production can not compete to a great extent due to the cost of labor. However we are also not on a level playing field due to other considerations regarding the environment and saftey in the work place and these costs in doing business.

We have technologies that should to some extent aid in labor cost reductions (automation) However, if the plant is closed with tumble weeds blowing across the parking lot, technological advances will not be implimented within. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif

The price of raw materials in the US is going up which will help drive up the price of any goods made here in the US; hardly a boon to aiding in manufacture. Why are the raw materials goin up? Because of the great demand for these materials in Asia and we are exporting to them to fill this demand. Why are they buying these materials? Because they are willing and able to take these materials and produce finished goods and components. Is the US equally willing and able to produce these finished goods and components? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif

Here's a totally unrealistic solution! Instead of paying a company in China (for instance) $10 for a flashlight, let's pay them $20 with the understanding that the extra $10 goes to the employees in wage increase and to the plant for polution abatement. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Now, not only are the people of this company better off and on their way to parity on a more global scale, at $20 for a light, the home boys can compete as well! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif Told you it wasn't realistic! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/str.gif

 

[nekomane]

McGizmo
[ QUOTE ]
Why are the raw materials goin up? Because of the great demand for these materials in Asia and we are exporting to them to fill this demand.

[/ QUOTE ]

A lot of that material is also mined in China. The Chinese government has shut out foreign investment from this sector and controls export. I just learned today that Japan relys on China for rare metals like barium, stibium, tungsten etc more heavily than oil from Saudi Arabia.

Like it our not, China is going to influence more and more aspects of our lives one way or another. As a neighbor I am anxious and excited to see how relations develop in the following years.

For starters, a machine shop I have been talking to keeps blaming the rising price for raw materials each time they give me a quote /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif