Toxic Toys Topple Tiny Tots and Trendy Teens

China: Lead Toxins Take a Global Round Trip

The article by Fairclough takes over from last weeks readings sighting poor conditions and laws in China as part of the blame for toxic materials in Chinese exports. However, Fairclough sights another problem as even more cause for concern. That problem is e-waste recycling from the U.S.

There is a global issue at hand in which a cycle causes China to manufacture items with lead, the U.S. to send the recycled remnants of such products back to China, and China to reuse their materials in new items destined to be shipped back to the U.S. all over again.

Jewelry is a huge export from China, making up 70% of the $4.5 billion industry and 6.7 billion pieces of such exports were recalled in 2007. This is huge both for China and the U.S. This means a great deal of U.S. imports are toxic and China is paying the price for recalling them.

Another item caught in this mess is e-waste, such as computers and cell phones. 50 millions tons of the stuff is tossed every year in the U.S. and sent back to China to be reused. Much of the materials are put into new electronics, the jewelry mentioned above, and toys while much of it is simply dumped in various places in China. This means more poisoning in exports and poisoning of the Chinese environment. None of this cycle is regulated by the U.S. or Chinese environmental protection bureaus. Both China and the U.S. stand to lose health and environment battles in this case.

Why is lead so bad? It causes brain damage and death from exposure or, more harmfully, from ingestion. This harms U.S. children, teens, and others who use the goods and also harms the workers that make them. The lack of labor laws in China allow workers to touch and inhale toxins from the materials as they manufacture them into products. Again, China and U.S. citizens are putting their health at risk and increasing medicals costs when resulting conditions need to be treated.

Ok, another question. Why is this being allowed to happen? The answer is, as usual, money. Lead alloy is way cheaper than other materials, more abundant, and more pliable. U.S. and other major customers of China want the lowest cost.

'It's too costly to make lead-free products,' says owner Wang Quijuan. 'Chinese products have to be sold cheaply in foreign markets, or they are not competitve.'

It's clear, here, that the blame is to, like labor issues, be blamed on foreign companies for pressuring China to be too cheap. I can see it that way but China should also be taking care of its products and its people.

Is there another way? Yes. Many companies claim to offer their customers the choice of lead-free products but most decline because of the cost. Then, companies fight back saying they are not aware of the lead content in the products they contract from Chinese factories. Who's right and who's not?

So, the last question for now... What can and is being done about it? The U.S. has decided to begin researching the global scope of the lead poisoning problem but this is no easy task. For now, consumers simply need to be informed that, while recycling is good in most cases, it may be putting more chemicals back into both China and the U.S. than once thought. Oh bother.

Is it possible that the U.S. is actually more to blame than China for labor abuse???

U.S. Senate testimony regarding commerce, science, and transportation

We read the testimony by Charles Kernaghan, the Director of National Labor Committee. This plea to the Senate essentially reinforces the hardships and lack of justice we observed in the documentary on Lifeng.

Violating Workers' Rights

Laborers are forced into temporary contracts so that they do not have any rights with the company. They are paid hundreds of percentages below China's legal minimum wage and work hundreds of percentages of hours more than legally allowed in the nation. Workers are docked pay for unfair reasons and shortchanged their earned pay for absolutely no reason. The labor board director emphasizes over and over again that factories all over China are guilty of the exact same violations, just on greater or lesser scales.

The Apparent Solution

The hugest injustice is that at least the problem of pay could be resolved with little effect felt throughout major corporations. Kernaghan states that,

Mattel's 'Barbie Hug N' Heal Pet Doctor' set costs just $9.00 to make in China, yet- even on sale- it retails for $29.99 in the U.S. This means that the price of the Mattel toy is being marked up an astonishing $20.99- or 233 percent... Mattel spends $3.45 to advertise the Barbie Pet Doctor toy- more than 18 times the 19 cents they pay the workers in China to make it... It is clear that Mattel could afford to assure respect for workers rights in China and pay the workers a fair wage so they could climb out of misery and at least into poverty.

This is an astonishing perspective to finally see and I hope that it is true. However, one must also think that if Mattel did not advertise with such fervor and pay its leaders so well, would it be competitive and profitable enough to even stay in business nationally? Is the economic price worth the moral price?

All of this, it can be argued, is magnified, if not caused by U.S. corporations. Like the doc. showed, Kernaghan is serious about placing a lot of blame on American and European brands for pressuring China to lower prices and increase outputs at the cost of Chinese workers' rights.

As late as 2005, Mattel sought ands won special 'waivers' so they could pay their workers less than the already-below-subsistence legal minimum wage.

Clearly, the Chinese government is seeking to offer its own people some form of protection but Mattel, fearing a loss in revenue, has pressed them to make an exception in their case.

Another example of how we can sense that foreign investors are to blame for the labor crisis is the fact that most corporations refuse to publish the names and addresses of the factories they obtain supplies from in China. Clearly, something is being hidden here or the companies are simply ashamed.

The injustices are mounting here, they are real, and there seems to be no way out unless this testimony is well-received and governments start to take action. This is interesting, however, because the documentary seems to try and blame both the consumer and business for such harmful actions and this memo blames U.S. and European companies way more.

Relating to Health of U.S. Citizens May Spark Support

Keranghan also pulls the issue of toy and sporting goods safety into the issue. He states that the same actions of increasing what foreign companies pay Chinese factories per good and giving workers rights will also help to lessen the occurrence of poisoning in toys because conditions in factories will be much better. In the instance, it seems he is trying to make giving help to China's workers a win-win situation for the U.S. My only wish is that he proved how the two correlated better.

Labor Rights in China

It comes of no surprise that Tim Costello, Brenden Smith, and Jeremy Brecher have all come to understand the same point that Kernanghan was trying to make. There are Chinese laws for workers' rights and corporations are outright refusing to follow them citing economic interests as the reason.

Oh, Wal-Mart

Ok, so it's not just Wal-Mart but it figures they would be a part of this, too. Many companies, like Mattel, are not allowing China to pass more strict labor laws that would significantly help the treatment, health, safety, and renumeration of workers because such laws would "reduce employment opportunities for PRC workers," (I'm sorry, is that a threat? I thought these laws would significantly increase human welfare for PRC workers!) and also reduce China's competitive edge against other sweatshop nations, such as Mexico, with slightly higher wages for workers.

How can corporations make such threats? Easy, they are the number one reason China is even where it is in the world economy today.

65% of the tripling of Chinese exports... is traceable to outsourcing by Chinese subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs) and joint ventures.

Essentially, do what we say or we will ruin your entire economy and you'll be even worse off than you are now.

Again, Relating the Problem Back to the U.S. Will Draw Support

If only U.S workers knew that the wages and state of labor in China indirectly created the wages and conditions in the U.S. and other labor markets throughout the whole world. The crazy thing is, they do. Because companies can get cheaper wages from Chinese workers, they are either moving their business to Asia or using this as leverage to get U.S. workers to accept lower pay as well.

The logic behind the phenomenon is this: China has increased the world labor market by 50% without contributing as must in capital. There are more workers in need of employment and wages than there is living-wage equivalent capital to go around. Thus, when one loses so does the other.

The point is, again, it's up to U.S. and European governments to make good on their commitments. They have all said their MNCs would stand to protect labor and so far they have done the exact opposite. This hurts China's workers and the U.S.'s workers and places economic values about ethical and moral values. In what world does this make sense?

Labor in China

Elite, Middle Class, and the Poor

In his article regarding the distinct classes in China, T. Cheek explores the characteristics and problems of each and why the government will never be able to satisfy everyone under the current system.

The Elite

This group is the wealthiest and has little to worry about. They drive luxury cars and live for money. This group fears an upprising from the poor and seek to keep the government and economy working in their favor. This is also the group that China shows off to the world to prove they are doing very well and their people are happy. It's good PR for them but unethical behavior at its greatest.

The Middle Class

People in this group gain the most from being conservative and maintaining the status quo. Middle class work hard and pay no attention to government workings (this is also the case in other Asian nations, such as the people I talked with while in Singapore). Middle class people live in a basic nuclear family and pride themselves on living without grandparents and extended family while nuturing their children to become productive members of society.

The Working Class

Here is the most dangerous group for communism, surprisingly since communism was founded to ensure the working class was happy and equal. These people work hard but do not have job stability. The problem with working class is they can easily be replaced at work and are often deprived of basic rights. However, they can fight back and often do. Those who protest on a local scale are given concessions to keep their movement local. Those that try to organize regionally and nationally, considered the greatest threat to communism, are stopped, brutally. This class is the one with the most problems that also has the greatest chance to change their situations.

The Underclass

Chinese people in this class have it worst. They must travel always to find jobs and rarely are paid or treated well when they can find work. Here, no one enjoys any rights and must work in sweatshops. Even though they have the hardest lives, their lack of shelter and identity in China stops them from every trying to protest for more rights.

Essentially, China can never stop fearing unrest because it can never satisfy all the competing interests of these groups.

Lipeng Blue Jeans Factory Documentary

This documentary made me cry, but I still don't think I'm going to be up in arms tomorrow when I wake up. It's terrifying and completely unjust but the documentary, while it paints a vivid picture of conditions for both workers and factory owners in China, does not outline ways for people or even international groups to fight to change the situation.

From a worker's point of view

The story of Jasmine, the 17 year old who left her family at home in order to support her family, really taps into the heart of the lower class plight. She first must find work on her own in a big city that she could never even have begun to imagine. Her motivation for sacrificing her own life is repaying her family for being born female. She says that she knows her family was disappointed when they gave birth to her, a daughter, and hopes her earnings will make them happy to have had her. Her situation is a bleak one in which everyone she works with is as young as or younger than her and a girl. This seems to be what happens to the females in China. This is an example of gender and human rights violations. The security of China's young girls is being threatened. They do not have the freedom to listen to music and go to school like other young girls and to grow. They are, however, aware of the corruption and harm being done to them. They discuss it but just say there's nothing they can do. It's a sad situation where only external forces can help them.

Looking at it from industry's point of view

Even factory owners see their situation as being taken advantage of. They praise Deng Xiopeng for his economic reforms that allowed them to move up in social class, but this is such a small percentage of the population. These elite class believe that the lower class are where they are because they are uneducated and incapable of learning work ethics. The factory owner in the story even says that he needs to control these lower people and they deserve to be told what to do. Then he goes on to complain that even his life is hard. He must work hard and gets taken advantage of by international labels who get paid way more than even he does. However, this does not excuse his behavior towards his workers.

Some factory workers from another factory spoke on camera, something they can be fined and jailed for, about their conditions and how factory owners manipulate them to appease U.S. labor inspectors. One even claims,

He gave us a memo to teach the workers what to say.

Thus, the lower class continues to be exploited, the U.S. thinks the workers are happy, and the factory gets to operate at its usual efficiency.

It seems like we can hate the factory owners, then. But it's hard to when you think about the U.S. labels that order from them. The price international companies demand from factories is so low that even if the owners did want to treat and pay workers more fairly, they could not afford do. Thus, one might see fit to blame U.S. companies even more than the Chinese government for encouraging the abuse of these workers. One could even go as far to say that U.S. labels are in fact even more to blame than the Chinese government because all the government does is allow it but, unlike the companies, does not actively encourage and desire it. So, when the Lipeng factory owner says,

Meeting shipping deadlines is our number one concern,

instead of listing "our workers" as such, it's easy to hate him. But, we need to remember that he is under close scrutiny from the companies that purchase from him and he needs to do whatever it takes to make it for his own well-being just as much as the workers must.

Either way, this situation is a bleak one. It's so sad and so alarming that I have no idea where I could even begin to help. How can one start when an end seems impossible to achieve? How can we bring security and peace to these young girls who are so far away physically and culturally from us? Like Cheek's article outlines, this is the most troubled class of all but the one posing the least threat because they can have no voice. So, if we have no voice and they have no voice, then there is no hope for them, is there?