I have a question about all the factories in China.

[demigoddess]

If all the republicans are afraid that Obama or the democrats will socialize businesses, one of the charges they made about lending money to GM. Why aren't they worried that China, which is supposed to be a socialist/communist regime, will socialize and confiscate the factories etc that american countries have in China?? It just never seems to come up as a issue in the discussion of socialism versus capitalism.

[KT2000]

1. Good point!

History tells us that it has been done before. The arrogance of western businesses blinded them to the possibility. Western business assumes superiority to China because the west is good at the quick buck. China on the other hand plans long term and they make strategic moves when the time is right. Some Chinese officials have remarked how stupid we are.

The republicans support business. Business now operates on a 30 day bottom line.

Anyway, that is my opinion.

[rfranklin]

2. Because they can see that the factories are run by capitalists...

who like to exploit their citizens the way Republicans would like to exploit employees in the USA. A whopping 70 cents per hour and stacked in dormitories. (The good factories.)

[Greyhound]

3. The deal was cut in the 70's.

The Chinese government allows them to abuse the workers and keep most of the profits in exchange for not seizing them. As long as it remains profitable for the Chinese parasites the deal will continue.

[bahrbearian]

11. That makes more sense. $$$$$$

[moondust]

4. What if...

a military confrontation? Isn't it kind of stupid for U.S. manufacturing to be so heavily dependent on a potential military adversary? Look at the important role manufacturing played in WWII.

[demigoddess]

12. that's what I have been thinking. It will be expensive for us

and they can do it anytime in the future if they don't get what they want out of us.

[moondust]

21. One thing to remember:

As long as China still needs U.S. consumers (with the money) to buy the stuff they make, they probably won't do anything too rash that could jeopardize their access to the U.S. market.

[Wounded Bear]

5. China represents the worst qualities of capitalism melded with...

the worst qualities of communism.

We lose. :shrug:

[truedelphi]

6. And the Chinese at the top don't mind the split between a few

Chinese managers running a factory and the Americans offering the Capital.

At least thirty million Chinese prisoners are factory workers, whose only "payment" is in the form of getting to keep their kidneys and liver in return for a good day's work.

[femrap]

7. STOP BUYING CRAP

MADE IN CHINA unless it's absolutely necessary! I haven't since 1989. I look at the Country of Origin on EVERYTHING I purchase.

[KT2000]

14. but that doesn't always work

Our trade laws are such that parts of a product can be made overseas and assembled in the US and will be labeled made in US. There are rules for percentages etc. but we are not always sure what is truly made here anymore.
I try to avoid those products too but I guess it is the best we can do.

[femrap]

20. Clothes? Food?

do you realize how much seafood is farm raised in China? Do you want to eat that? You better start checking those labels. Shoes, handbags, lightbulbs....come on. Fucking jars of fruit....'made in China.' They're probably just poisoning us slowly. All my shoes are made in either Spain or Brazil or Indonesia. No fucking China. It is totally possible....

I'm not buying a John Deere combine for goddess' sake.

If more people spent their money using their conscience, this world would be a better place.

[KT2000]

23. don't get your response

I do try not to buy things from China. I do check the labels.
I try to buy local produce and meat and fish.
Most of my clothing and shoes come from the second hand store.
Actually I try to buy what I need at second hand stores because the items are better quality from the old days.
I gave up eating shrimp because most of it comes from farms all over the world where the mangrove forests are decimated so quick buck investors can make a killing but leave shoreline communities vulnerable to hurricanes. That is to say nothing of the specie that once made the forests their home.
All I was saying is that we are not always getting accurate information about where things are made. Electronics, appliances, including computers, for example may be assembled here but the parts are made in China. Even when clothes are "made in the US' the textiles are probably from China.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to buy things made in the US and labeling laws are often misleading the consumer.

[femrap]

26. I just try to

buy from some supposed 'democracies.' Your original post made it sound like it was impossible to buy non-chinese.

Shit....I hope Mother Nature takes us all out.

[LoveIsNow]

8. Because China isn't communist

They are a state capitalist regime, and their success comes by abusing their workers on a level worse again than any robber baron. Communism is supposed to be based around workers/unions/cooperatives having control of the means of production, and there is none of that to be seen in China.

[demigoddess]

13. I know they are not really communists just like the USSR

but the republicans have called the 'communist' countries a threat to our capitalism but we don't let out a peep when companies do business with them.

[wickerwoman]

9. It's an extremely remote possibility.

For starters, China hasn't been a truly socialist country since in the reforms in the 1980s and the Open Door Policy. They're basically a capitalist society with a veneer of socialism and an extremely oppressive nominally communist party running everything.

Secondly, we're the major market for Chinese goods. They still can't afford to buy the crap that they produce. And seizing the factories would lead to global condemnation. Nobody would import from China which would collapse their economy.

Thirdly, doing business with China is the only proven way to bring about the human rights reforms that we want to see. China has made huge strides on environment issues and human rights (and yes there is still a *looong* way to go) mostly because they care about their image on the world stage. If we refused to do business with them, they wouldn't care what anyone thought and the same progress would not occur.

I agree that's it's hypocritical of the GOP to decry socialism while being happy to get in bed with China, but I don't think the possibility of their seizing our assets over there is an especially likely one.

[KT2000]

15. They will however

use the plans from US goods made there to make products to compete, such as GM vehicles and Boeing jets. There are many countries that could give a rip whether the product was essentially stolen or not. American consumers are the same way.

The US is the dying market - the emerging markets are in China and India. This is what Wes Clark was talking about during his run for president.

[FreakinDJ]

10. Very Nice Working Conditions there in China

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_zKBbtj9rWrU/THStBoEcZRI/AAAAAAAAFrw/S9UrMiws-Fo/s400/Chinese+execution.jpg





Kinda makes you proud to be an American consumer

[wickerwoman]

17. What's the context/source for those pictures?

Not that it isn't oppressive, but that looks to me like crackdowns on suspected terrorism in Xinjiang.

I'm not excusing it- just pointing out that it might be the equivalent of taking pictures of Abu Ghraib and using it to describe how US companies treat their workers.

[FreakinDJ]

18. Láodòng Gaizao - "reform through labor,"

Láogǎi / Laogai Museum

勞改, the abbreviation for Láodòng Gaizào (勞動改造), which means "reform through labor," is a slogan of the Chinese criminal justice system and has been used to refer to the use of prison labor and prison farms in the People's Republic of China (PRC). It is estimated that in the last 50 years more than 50 million people have been sent to laogai camps.<1>

Laogai is distinguished from laojiao, or re-education through labor, which is an administrative detention for a person who is not a criminal but has committed minor offenses, and is intended to reform offenders into law-abiding citizens.<2> Persons detained under laojiao are detained in facilities which are separate from the general prison system of laogai. Both systems, however, involve penal labor.

http://sites.google.com/site/chinhdangvu/china-1/human-rights-in-the-people-s-republic-of-china/laogai

[wickerwoman]

19. Cool, thanks.

Would still make the point, though, that this is more the equivalent of prison labor in the US (where prisoners are paid .20/hour to make office furniture) and not the general working conditions. Also the US has a larger total number of prisoners that China and on a per capita basis imprisons six times as many people as China. Just because something is "Made in the USA" doesn't mean that it was made in a competitive and non-exploitative way.

Not that working conditions in China aren't appalling in places. Simply that the majority of workers in non-prison conditions are not forced to work with guns to their heads. Hyperbole only serves to weaken the very valid arguments against exploitative labor conditions in third world countries.

[FreakinDJ]

22. You noticed her hair flying as the bullet entered her skull

in the picture

We don't take people out and summarily execute them for reasons as minuscule as protesting.

[wickerwoman]

24. No,

but your original point was about exploitation of labor. This is not an example of exploitation of labor. It's an example of summary execution of a prisoner. They're both bad. But one can't be used to make the other point. If she was crafting a little plastic Happy Meal toy as she was being shot, you might be able to make the leap. Otherwise, who the hell knows who is she or why she is being shot. Nor does the picture say anything about the working conditions of the 99% of the Chinese population who are not prisoners and who work under primitive but not necessarily exploitative conditions.

And if your real concern is people not buying products that are the result of cruelty and exploitation, my point is that you can start more effectively a lot closer to home because while we don't summarily execute prisoners we do force them to work under slave conditions and then sell those products, unlabeled, to the American public.

We have a much better chance of reforming the prison-industrial complex in the US than we do the prison-industrial complex in China. So why not start there? And then we would have the moral high ground when we address human rights abuses in China.

[amborin]

16. isn't China rep of the authoritarian road to capitalism?

[Radical Activist]

25. Many of them do care about it.

This could be a great wedge issue for Democrats but we don't use it. No one is going to vote Democratic over it because too much of the Democratic Party is promoting free trade as well. This is one example of why a more economic populist message is also winning politics.