There was hardly a raised eyebrow
This blog has touched upon China in two different ways of late.
- The Shi Tao controversy, in which U.S. firms such as Yahoo are alleged to be helping the Chinese government to repress its people.
- The Wal-Mart controversy, in which the Ontario Mountain Village Association and others oppose Wal-Mart because it offers low-cost Chinese goods.
Assisting in Chinese Repression
Regarding the first issue, Jennifer has provided the following comment:
U.S. companies like Yahoo that are cooperating with China’s regulations are enabling the assault on human rights to continue. In my opinion, we need to cease ALL trade with China, period. Microsoft doesn’t need to do business with China. They make trillions already. Allowing them to do so, and to comply with Chinese law in such a way that violates everything our nation stands for, should be illegal. If, however, we allow them to continue doing business with China, and that many Chinese are online, there is no way that the government can prevent the ideas of freedom and democracy from infiltrating their society, even if sites containing hot words are banned.
In a related note, the BooYahoo blog (which calls for a user boycott of Yahoo) is now available at www.booyahoo.com.
And, in another related note, Cisco's assistance in building the Great Firewall of China has not gone unnoticed:
Internet equipment maker Cisco Systems is fighting a shareholder action that urges the company to adopt a comprehensive human rights policy for its dealings with the Chinese government, and with other states practicing political censorship of the internet.
A shareholder resolution filed last May by the Massachusetts-based investment group Boston Common Asset Management calls for Cisco to add human rights considerations to the criteria it uses to certify resellers....
But Cisco's Terry Alberstein, director of corporate affairs for the Asia Pacific region, says the company has never helped the Chinese government suppress free speech.
"Cisco does not participate in any way in any censorship activities in the People's Republic of China," Alberstein says. "We have never custom-tailored our products for the China market, and the products that we sell in China are the same products we sell everywhere else."
Cisco is formally asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to omit the Boston Common proposal from the agenda for the company's next annual meeting in November, which would prevent shareholders from voting on it. The company argues the proposal is too vague to act on, and that Cisco already has a suitable human rights policy. "The proposal has been substantially implemented by Cisco, and is therefore moot," says spokeswoman Robin Jenkins.
Even if it came to a vote and passed, the resolution would not be binding on Cisco's executives. But "it sends a strong message to management, and it gets across the sentiment of shareholders in a way that writing a letter can't do," says Wolfe.
Alberstein has a point when noting that Cisco products have not been modified for the Chinese market. The technology that can be used to block Chinese from accessing information on "democracy" is the same technology that can be used to block Yahoo or Cisco employees from surfing porn during business hours. So do you need to attach social conditions to the use of the technology (e.g. if a Chinese router manufacturer financed by a porn collective wants to sell to the United States, would the Chinese manufacturer prohibit its customers from using its technology to block porn sites?)?
Undermining American Labor
As I noted previously, the Ontario Mountain Village Association lists some reasons why they oppose Wal-Mart. Here's one of them.
The Mom and Pop businesses do not need the "made in China" competition.
In a similar vein, Wal-Mart is the sole company blamed for the problem:
Even worse, Wal-Mart shoppers are supporting forced labor camps where the healthiest inmates are executed for “organ harvesting”. Wal-Mart also buys heavily from slave labor manufacturing zones, where women workers are typically paid 3 cents an hour or less for 70 to 90-hour work weeks.
Well, we all know that Wal-Mart isn't the only company that's buying from China, just like we all know that Yahoo isn't the only business that's selling to China. Walk through a Target, or a 99 Cents Only Store, or even a unionized grocery store, and you'll find "Made in China" goods all over the place.
Are there places that you can shop that DON'T sell Chinese goods? Sure there are - in Russia:
"Chinese down garments used to sell well in Russia. Then certain unscrupulous merchants began to fill garments with odd bits of cloth, cotton and even bloodstained down. As a result, Chinese merchants lost the Russian market. When I visited Russia, I saw signs in stores that read, 'No Chinese goods in this store,' and felt demoralized," said Gao Dekang, president of Bosideng Co., Ltd. whose sales volume of down garments ranks first in China.
Or you could shop in Inner Mongolia:
THERE ARE NO CHINESE GOODS IN CHINA!
You know all those cool gadgets that you can buy, which all say, "Made in China"??? Well, I can't find any of those here. For instance, I want to buy an electric/battery-powered hair clipper, with attachments. Can't be found. I purposefully left my made-in-China back scratcher in Korea, because I figured I could buy one here. Can't be found. And China dolls... not made in China. If you want some China, yeah, there's plenty of that here, but heck! Every country has China these days. Am I really in China? There aren't any mobile phones made by Chinese companies, either. All right. What's going on here. I must be in some country that speaks Chinese but isn't China. Oh, yeah... I'm in Inner Mongolia.
But what about the U.S.? After some searching, I finally found a U.S. firm that boycotts China - well, at least in 1996; don't know what they're doing today:
Bucking the trend in Washington state, which trades heavily with China,
one small local company has taken a stand on human rights by ending all
commerce with that nation.
Puget Consumers Co-op has become one of a handful of companies in the
country to boycott all Chinese goods.
Members of PCC, a chain of seven natural-food markets in Seattle, voted
last month to stop buying goods from China until that country ends its
occupation of Tibet. Tibetan supporters now plan to lobby other member-owned
cooperatives to halt their China trade, said Kunzang Yuthok, director of the
Tibetan Rights Campaign....
More than 100 civic groups, churches and other organizations, including
the AFL-CIO, have pledged to boycott China, Yuthok said.
But what does the AFL-CIO's boycott of China mean? Will they withhold labor services from their employers if they do business in China? Or would they simply say that they have no control over the matter (kind of like what Yahoo and Cisco say when questioned about their cooperation with the Chinese government)?
This comment, not authorized by the AFL-CIO, is interesting:
Only b[u]y union made, even if it is from China.
In other words, if Chinese workers are organized, this union member doesn't care whether the government is repressive or not.
P.S. I was going to visit a page on the website boycottmadeinchina.org, but got the following message from the Great Firewall of My Employer:
The site you have attempted to reach may be considered inappropriate for access....
And no, I'm not going to withhold services from my employer. Call me hypocritical. That's probably what's driving a lot of the actions that Yahoo, Cisco, and the AFL-CIO aren't taking. What would you do? What have you done?
P.P.S. The title of this post is taken from a Brian Eno song ("China My China") on his album Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy. The last two verses of the song are tangentially relevant (emphasis mine):
China, my China, I've wandered around and you're still here
(Which I guess you should be proud of)
Your walls have enclosed you,
Have kept you at home for thousands of years
(But there's something I should tell you)
All the young boys, they are dressing like sailors.
I remember a man who
Jumped out from a window over the bay
(There was hardly a raised eyebrow)
The coroner told me,
This kind of thing happens every day.
You see, from the Pagoda, the world is so tiny.
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