I just finished The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage and I was blown away by it.
Here's the blurb on Barnes & Noble:
"Acclaimed Financial Times correspondent Alexandra Harney uncovers the truth about how China is able to offer such amazingly low prices to the rest of the world. She has discovered that intense pricing pressure from Western companies combined with ubiquitous corruption and a lack of transparency exacts an unseen and unconscionable toll in human misery and environmental damage."
Do you want to feel horrible guilt for 70% of the products in your home? This is the book for you! Do you like to read about how greedy & materialistic westerns are? Read this book! Do you hate Walmart? You'll be licking your chops while reading. Are you concerned about human rights and want to understand better what's behind the "Made in China" label on most of your consumer goods? This is also the book for you.
This book opened my eyes in many ways. First, I think that we as Americans think we live in a bubble and that our actions, while they may affect others negatively, it's their problem and not ours. Our materialism has a price and that price is most often paid by people in 3rd world countries. We're feeling the effects of that materialism now (with the financial crisis, another post entirely) and we don't like it.
I think it's good to think about where our products come from and use our purchasing power accordingly. We want the most that we can have for the least price possible (I'm no exception to this). But, even if it costs us less, there are costs that are paid by others. However, trying to stay away from buying products from China is like trying not to breathe. It's almost impossible. But, this book also talks about the companies who are doing things right, who are purchasing products from suppliers who follow labor & environmental laws, which was helpful to me. That may mean that I might have to pay $2-$5 more for a shirt, but after reading this book, that's a price I'm willing to pay.
However, reading this book right after reading In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto makes me want to move to Montana, buy a farm and knit my children's clothes using wool from our sheep that we raise, let my kids play with cardboard boxes (that I make with recycled, organic paper) and eat grass and wildflowers. Oy.
2 comments:
I would be totally there about the farm except I'd want to stay here and just buy all the clothing and food from you and the other people living in the wilderness ;).
I would love to read that book! Did you hear about the book written by the family who decided to completely forgo anything from China for an entire year? (or maybe it was a blog...) Anyway, it was fascinating the things they had to do without and how they managed.
ITA with so much of what you wrote. The materialism and consumerist mentality just bothers me so very much. Though honestly I don't know whether to limit my moral qualms only to China b/c countries such as Cambodia are so rife with human rights abuses that I have a hard time believing things from there are much better.
The place this really gets me is with clothing, b/c we don't have a huge clothing budget and while we aim for simplicity in not having a lot of clothes anyway, when I do buy them they're from Target or Old Navy both of which I'm sure involve cheap exploited labor...and I don't know how to get around it without busting our budget.
BTW - have you ever heard of IJM (international justice mission)? It is such an inspiring non-profit organization. If you haven't heard of them before I'll have to link to their site and the book by their founder. If I were single and had pursued a law degree my dream job would be to work for them internationally.
Rachael -- the good thing about this book is that it kind of gives you some guidelines about which companies are good and which aren't so good. Even though Walmart is bad in a myriad of different ways, they do have a better handle on their suppliers than say, Target (which pains me greatly because I love Target). Walmart's corporate governance is much greater than Target's, at least that's what the book made it sound like. Gap is one of the better companies, and I believe they buy for Old Navy as well?
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