having lived and worked in asia (and in hong kong and china specifically) for many years over my professional career, i would tell/remind folks:
1. you think america is a big country, lotta people, china is substantially bigger - so many kinds of people, many kinds of business people, greatly varying in professionalism, values and capability - they have a very capitalist mindset and act on economic interest, and are very willing to cut corners if they can get away with it... it is as much a comment on capitalism as it is on the chinese business people
2. chinese government control is pervasive, and self interested, though their chosen path to self interest (essentially self preservation) is to try to improve the economic well being of its populace and expand its reach/status outside the country so its citizens can ’feel proud’ of being chinese - one just needs to understand chinese history over the past couple hundred years to understand why these buttons are very effectively pushed by the government in gaining the support of the population
3. yes, rights of free speech and protest are not available to chinese citizens and the government does extreme and heavy handed things to protect its position and quash ’unrest’ as it sees it - no doubt about it; furthermore chinese government sponsors a very ’aggressive’ approach to gaining intellectual capital it does not have - a real problem for ’more advanced’ countries who develop that capital, and the chinese need to be actively deterred on this front
4. many many foreign ventures exist in china, though they usually have at least a minority chinese interest, not to mention sourcing agreements by non chinese companies to take advantage of lower costs of production compared to home countries the foreigners could try to make their products in
5. so it is true that if you buy something that is made in china, or made with parts inside that are made in china, the chinese government and chinese people (indirectly) benefit - but is it practical for us as consumers to stop this, given the extent of globalization -- of how so much of the world’s gdp is manufactured in a global/multinational supply chain? my personal feeling is no... china as a country and its government has to be contended with by the US, EU and Japan/Korea at the geo-political and geo-economic policy levels... which is leadership of these countries and alliances among them are so critical in this time
6. we should not forget that in america, there are many many people who work at wage rates they cannot really live on, and there is tremendous oppression in that sense too -- yes americans have ’freedoms’ the chinese do not have, but at the end of the day, what are the prospects for these unfortunate americans to live better lives? my point is there is much injustice in this country as well, which i don’t need to enumerate - what has happened in this country in recent years certainly weakens our standing to call out how oppressive regimes like the one in china operates, as offensive as they are to our sensibilities
said my bit here with this, thanks for your patience, now back to normal programming...
