A Recall is a Recall, Chinese or American, or Not?
Wendy Liu
December 17, 2007
“Tonight, a massive new recall of dangerous toys imported from communist China,” a prominent CNN anchorman announced, sounding triumphant in his own crusade. “Another batch of killer toys from China is being recalled,” a news service warned in a headline. “The Chinese dipped Ernie and Bert in lead paint…” another TV personnel described with vivid imagination.
With a feeding frenzy of sound bites and headlines like this, a visiting Martian would think that the vicious Chinese were out murdering the gullible Americans. Their choice of weapons of mass destruction: toxic and faulty products including toys, tires, seafood, pet food, toothpaste, ground beef, frozen pizza, infant cold medicine, bagged spinach... Oops, those killer beef, killer pizza, killer cold medicine and killer spinach were made in America! Americans were killing themselves, too? This couldn’t be true. The Chinese must have infiltrated all vital industries in America to carry out their long-harbored schemes…
We of course know better. A recall is a recall, Chinese or American. It is not ideological, moral, cultural or conspiratorial. It is a healthy part of a market economy. If one has to pin a name tag on these recalls, it should be capitalist, not communist. It is China’s successful capitalist march, along with American capitalists’ successful profit-seeking and out-sourcing, that has turned the vast socialist backwater into the most thriving manufacturing center of the world.
More specifically, a major contributing factor to these recalls, I believe, was the production cost involved. For instance, according to a Xinhua news analysis, for a Barbie doll that sells $20 in an American store, the Chinese factory makes $0.35. For an iPod priced at $299 in the US, the Chinese company assembling it takes $3.00. Similarly, according to a Huffington Post report, for a Nike sneaker retailed at $70 in America, the Chinese worker earns $0.60-80. One wonders how much room there is in quality improvement or inspection work on the part of the Chinese manufacturers.
A Chinese saying went: “One cent price, one cent goods.” But in the last 20 years or so, the Chinese manufacturers have almost turned the saying into “One cent price, ten cent goods,” making more bang for the dollar than ever. The bargain-hunting Americans and the hard-working Chinese have both benefited from Made-in-China. It is a win-win situation, as they say.
Now with a few recalls that come with any industrial production, not to say with the cut-throat low cost in China, there has been a din of outcries besides the communist name-calling: the “China toycott,” the “China free” labels, “Not Made in China” as a selling point or a trademark, etc.
But recalls of American products happen all the time. Ford has just recalled nearly 1.2 million vehicles. GE recalled 2.5 million dishwashers earlier. Did anyone even notice, not to say boycott?
It is understandable that people want to avoid anything toxic. But is all the lead paint scare based on “a hard evidence,” as a spiked-online article asked, “that Chinese toys are a threat to Western children” or “Western fears - and often irrational ones at that - of lead poisoning?” Remember the government warnings that lead was in your drinking water? As stated on National Safety Council’s website, there are many ways in which humans are exposed to lead: through deteriorating paint, household dust, bare soil, air, drinking water, food, ceramics, home remedies, hair dyes and other cosmetics.
Even if lead paint were as dangerous as some fear, one can rest assured that the Chinese workers “dipping” toys in it day in and day out have poisoned themselves first. Not only that, Chinese workers are also exposed to various other hazards at work, “ranging from airborne poisons they inhale to primitive machines that sever their limbs,” as the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Loretta Tofani chronicled in her series "American Imports, Chinese Deaths." Besides, Chinese consumers have experienced more danger from fake products made in China than anybody in the world. Just like Americans, the Chinese have been killing themselves, too.
And if there is any moral responsibility in the toxic or faulty Chinese products as some believe, shouldn’t American companies contracting the Chinese factories share part of it? What about America’s “want-more-stuff-for-practically-nothing masses,” as Cristina Rouvalis of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called? After all, a Chinese company director committed suicide over Mattel’s recalled toys his factory had made. Former head of China’s Food and Drug Administration was executed for substandard food and medicine. Hundreds of arrests were also made in China along with hundreds of licenses withdrawn or suspended because of shoddy products.
Maybe there is more to a Chinese products recall. There has certainly seemed to be more to the recent American reaction to one.
With a feeding frenzy of sound bites and headlines like this, a visiting Martian would think that the vicious Chinese were out murdering the gullible Americans. Their choice of weapons of mass destruction: toxic and faulty products including toys, tires, seafood, pet food, toothpaste, ground beef, frozen pizza, infant cold medicine, bagged spinach... Oops, those killer beef, killer pizza, killer cold medicine and killer spinach were made in America! Americans were killing themselves, too? This couldn’t be true. The Chinese must have infiltrated all vital industries in America to carry out their long-harbored schemes…
We of course know better. A recall is a recall, Chinese or American. It is not ideological, moral, cultural or conspiratorial. It is a healthy part of a market economy. If one has to pin a name tag on these recalls, it should be capitalist, not communist. It is China’s successful capitalist march, along with American capitalists’ successful profit-seeking and out-sourcing, that has turned the vast socialist backwater into the most thriving manufacturing center of the world.
More specifically, a major contributing factor to these recalls, I believe, was the production cost involved. For instance, according to a Xinhua news analysis, for a Barbie doll that sells $20 in an American store, the Chinese factory makes $0.35. For an iPod priced at $299 in the US, the Chinese company assembling it takes $3.00. Similarly, according to a Huffington Post report, for a Nike sneaker retailed at $70 in America, the Chinese worker earns $0.60-80. One wonders how much room there is in quality improvement or inspection work on the part of the Chinese manufacturers.
A Chinese saying went: “One cent price, one cent goods.” But in the last 20 years or so, the Chinese manufacturers have almost turned the saying into “One cent price, ten cent goods,” making more bang for the dollar than ever. The bargain-hunting Americans and the hard-working Chinese have both benefited from Made-in-China. It is a win-win situation, as they say.
Now with a few recalls that come with any industrial production, not to say with the cut-throat low cost in China, there has been a din of outcries besides the communist name-calling: the “China toycott,” the “China free” labels, “Not Made in China” as a selling point or a trademark, etc.
But recalls of American products happen all the time. Ford has just recalled nearly 1.2 million vehicles. GE recalled 2.5 million dishwashers earlier. Did anyone even notice, not to say boycott?
It is understandable that people want to avoid anything toxic. But is all the lead paint scare based on “a hard evidence,” as a spiked-online article asked, “that Chinese toys are a threat to Western children” or “Western fears - and often irrational ones at that - of lead poisoning?” Remember the government warnings that lead was in your drinking water? As stated on National Safety Council’s website, there are many ways in which humans are exposed to lead: through deteriorating paint, household dust, bare soil, air, drinking water, food, ceramics, home remedies, hair dyes and other cosmetics.
Even if lead paint were as dangerous as some fear, one can rest assured that the Chinese workers “dipping” toys in it day in and day out have poisoned themselves first. Not only that, Chinese workers are also exposed to various other hazards at work, “ranging from airborne poisons they inhale to primitive machines that sever their limbs,” as the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Loretta Tofani chronicled in her series "American Imports, Chinese Deaths." Besides, Chinese consumers have experienced more danger from fake products made in China than anybody in the world. Just like Americans, the Chinese have been killing themselves, too.
And if there is any moral responsibility in the toxic or faulty Chinese products as some believe, shouldn’t American companies contracting the Chinese factories share part of it? What about America’s “want-more-stuff-for-practically-nothing masses,” as Cristina Rouvalis of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called? After all, a Chinese company director committed suicide over Mattel’s recalled toys his factory had made. Former head of China’s Food and Drug Administration was executed for substandard food and medicine. Hundreds of arrests were also made in China along with hundreds of licenses withdrawn or suspended because of shoddy products.
Maybe there is more to a Chinese products recall. There has certainly seemed to be more to the recent American reaction to one.
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