Stu Bykofsky | Why are you buying anything from China?
WHEN I WAS growing up, Mom told me to clean my plate because "there are starving children in China." "Send the food to them," I'd cavalierly respond. What did China's hunger have to do with me? Decades later, the connection became clear.
WHEN I WAS growing up, Mom told me to clean my plate because "there are starving children in China."
"Send the food to them," I'd cavalierly respond. What did China's hunger have to do with me? Decades later, the connection became clear.
Today, newly minted millionaire parents in Beijing may be telling their (government-mandated) one child, "Clean your plate. There are starving children in America."
When did China start sending food to us ?
If you think it xenophobic to criticize another country, no matter the justification, take a swig of Diversity Lager, call me xenophobic and turn the page.
If you haven't, join Baby Cakes and me at the supermarket fish display. Atop a glistening mound of ice, there's a fish we favor, red snapper. It turns out to be real Red snapper, from Red China. (Mainland China, if you are PC.)
There it lay under the lights, despite earlier reports that some fish from China is unfit for human consumption. We dropped it like it was toxic (maybe it was), took tilapia from Thailand instead and told the seafood counter guy
we're not interested in food from China. I later stopped at the service desk to repeat: I don't trust, don't want, won't eat food from China.
In recent decades, America has exported millions of jobs to China while we've soaked up low-cost Chinese electronics, clothing and half the other stuff in Wal-Mart. It's low-cost mainly because Chinese workers toil for a fraction of what's paid to American workers. Because U.S. trade with China is mostly a one-way street - they make, we take - China has billions of our dollars to use against us any time it wants. Even as the lopsided balance of trade undermines our economy, bargain-happy Americans sell our soul by buying from China.
Permitting imports should mean that the supplier shares our standards, such as working conditions, safety and sanitation.
China doesn't. It started with poisoned dog food, which killed American pets. Then the parade began: tainted toothpaste, tires, dangerous electrical products, diseased seafood, jewelry and toys for tots slathered in lead paint, arts-and-crafts beads containing the equivalent of a date-rape drug. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? And you still buy from China? Death wish?
While its trade practices hurt us, some of its products can kill us. How important is saving a buck to you?
The greed and complacency of corporations has allowed China to swallow entire industries, such as toys. Heading into Christmas, with 80 percent of American toys made in China, it will be hard to avoid made-in-China toys, but your children will be safer if you do.
The list of tainted consumer products is supplemented by theft of intellectual property by Chinese entrepreneurs. Books, music, movies are all happily counterfeited in China and shipped without paying artists, producers or distributors one Red cent. In other counterfeiting, China's well known for fake designer products. Should we be enabling these people?
We're told the Chinese government stages periodic "crackdowns." It promises to do better, but in an authoritarian police state with spies on every block, how hard are they trying?
Our own government, to its shame, hasn't properly protected Americans from putrid imports. So it's up to us.
Until I am confident they've cleaned up the mess, I don't trust, won't buy, products from China.
How about you? *
E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns: