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Democrazy posted:It's awesome to say that sweatshops are wrong and that workers shouldn't be forced to live in difficult conditions. What's a plausible policy towards actually getting rid of sweatshops and improving welfare for the Chinese worker? Pass laws in the West requiring documentation proving some basic working standards are met by everyone in the supply chain, or you aren't legally allowed to sell your product in the EU/US/etc. There, now companies don't have anywhere else to run because it forces the issue away from (lack of) local labor regulations. Kind of like how REACH and ROHS in the EU work; you're not going to get very far by bullying China to increase & enforce its own standards, and even if you do companies will just move to the next place. If the developed world was actually concerned with the plight of the Chinese worker (not to mention other places where workers are abused), they would do something like this.
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Feb 21, 2012 01:28
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Nocturtle posted:While I agree with this logic and think it should be implemented anyway, in practice it is far easier for corporations working in developing countries to contract with local suppliers who'll lie about the details of production so as to live up to the regulatory requirement. If one of the suppliers is exposed as abusive, the corporation can simply claim ignorance and move on. Capitalism is an incredible system, and can adapt to barriers and constraints in a flexible and uncoordinated fashion in the pursuit of profit. Simple top-down approaches generally won't work against such adapatation, the only real solution is for workers to organize and demand concessions. I understand your point, but you will not be able to organize the workers and demand concessions globally. Even if you did, companies would start to move towards other countries without those protections unless you can't move anywhere else for natural resource reasons. Give harsh (I really mean harsh, not just lip service) penalties to any companies found in violation of importing abusive goods and companies will find a way to improve working conditions for at least a large portion of abused workers. This approach obviously wouldn't be a silver bullet and fix everything, but as far as I can see it's the approach that is most likely to singlehandedly make significant improvement.
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Feb 21, 2012 02:45
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Yeah, almost all of my Chinese friends here are talking about how this is just distracting everyone from actually important stuff that's going on and that the vandals and thieves are either stupid or opportunistic.
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Sep 18, 2012 14:56
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It's too bad about Stephen Chow's personal life and personality, because his movies are really good.
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Jan 25, 2013 04:13
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Bloodnose posted:From what I understand, China will have a massive advantage in manufacturing for decades to come because their infrastructure is so developed. It's way beyond what any economy of its development level should have even now. Anyone who has been on roads in India, Africa or Southeast Asia and compares them to Chinese ones will see what I mean. Heck, my company came into a literally free factory in northeastern China where wages are a lot lower last year, and we moved 2 product lines there from Dongguan and it's still been a massive failure. We can't find enough qualified suppliers or trained workers for hundreds of miles. Even with massively cheaper labor and a completely free factory, we'll still be lucky if we can get our production costs down to where they were in Dongguan within 2 or 3 years. The Pearl River Delta has a lot more going for it than low wages.
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Jan 28, 2013 05:17
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GlassEye-Boy posted:China thread, where we discuss non issues such as baby formula and breast feeding! Why are you calling it a non issue?
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Jan 29, 2013 07:57
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Grand Fromage posted:If you don't eat rice for literally every meal you will die. This is well known in East Asia. This and the kimchi guy you mentioned recently make me think that Korea is the odd east Asian country out. I've never heard anything like this in China. Even in Guangdong province, it's common for women to abstain from rice if they're trying to lose weight.
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Feb 8, 2013 18:28
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Peven Stan posted:Yeah I'm not sure why its still acceptable to say that all celestials eat rice. It would be like saying it's a well known Fact that all Americans are unable to resist eating burgers as their main form of food. I'm from central China, where things are extremely arid except for the yellow river and the staple starches are wheat based. Interestingly enough, there's a significant number of Chinese people that literally think most Americans eat hamburgers every day, and even more that seem to think white people eat bread the same way that they eat rice. Which isn't completely wrong, but it's not that simple.
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Feb 9, 2013 06:23
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It depends where in China. For example, near me a common day would be rice congee for breakfast, stir fried vegetables and a little bit of meat with a bowl of rice for lunch, and more stir fried stuff with another bowl of rice for dinner.
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Feb 9, 2013 09:42
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I can't speak beyond my experience as an engineer in Shenzhen, but there are a number of senior engineer positions in the electronics industry that are basically the 9-5, $50k job you described. You have to be a senior engineer with a pretty good specialization to actually get $50k, but it's possible. Alternatives are being a mid level manager in a multinational corporation, or accepting a $30k job (these aren't nearly as rare). I don't know about other departments, but my company pays mechanical engineers about $20-25k per year and we regularly have them leaving for $30k offers. But you're not going to become rich on that kind of money without something else coming along. I was just discussing this sort of thing with some of my coworkers yesterday. I think China is in a pretty interesting position, because there's tons of wealthy people and nearly all of them acquired their wealth rather than being born into it (except I guess in the case of people making money by the virtue of living on land that is now very valuable). There's really not that many ways rich people have made it, and basically none of them involve wages.
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Mar 8, 2013 10:36
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Usually in their 30s to early/mid 40s. Coming at it from a different perspective, we pretty much outsourced our Los Angeles office to Shenzhen by replacing people 1:1 and our labor costs are still about 2/3 of what they were. fart simpson fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Mar 8, 2013 |
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Mar 8, 2013 11:14
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How is it even possible to repay a mortgage with a 30% APR? I don't understand why anyone would enter an agreement like that.
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Mar 14, 2013 03:36
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Ardennes posted:If the value goes up 35% a year forever then it isn't a problem, right? Well yeah, but the value obviously isn't contractually obligated to go up 35% a year and anyone that thinks it will is insane.
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Mar 14, 2013 03:40
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caberham, how is an influx of unlicensed, back alley doctors something that helped turn Hong Kong into an economic powerhouse? I genuinely don't understand that point.
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Mar 14, 2013 06:45
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Doesn't China already have an informal network of money lenders that are comparable to payday loan operations in the US? I've heard talk about them before but I've never found anything substantial. Yes, one of my friends here and his dad ran one of those money lending businesses for a number of years, until one of their family friends doing the same business went to jail and his daughter was born. They closed up shop and he opened a legit travel company. I'm not completely sure of the details either, other than that it has something to do with credit cards and having dozens of bank accounts in different names and I imagine very careful record keeping. The guy is filthy rich now and owns a gigantic apartment in Shenzhen, like 5 or 6 different cars and tons of ridiculous stuff.
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Mar 14, 2013 13:19
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Yeah I just saw it said a 1 bedroom apartment in Shenzhen is 5500 rmb per month or so. The only people paying that much don't care about rent because their company is just paying it.
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Mar 17, 2013 05:51
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I like to imagine what it would be like today if the anarchists that wanted to use Esperanto as a national language had won and survived to the current day.
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Mar 18, 2013 02:36
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Modus Operandi posted:This just isn't a Republican thing though. Mention China and most of the people on the street will probably bring up imagery of mao suits, rice hats, and the great wall. People in the U.S. generally don't know poo poo about Asia, period. This is very true. I was dumbfounded when talking to my liberal, generally informed family two months ago about the possibility of my Chinese girlfriend coming with me next year to visit the US. All of them thought that in order to come to the US, she would have to convince the Chinese government of her ideological purity and good standing in order to be granted a permit to leave China on a vacation. Even my aunt, who has Chinese coworkers and friends and who has taken several recent business trips to Beijing, thought this.
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Apr 10, 2013 07:56
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Arglebargle III posted:To be fair Chinese citizens do need an exit visa to leave China, and they are routinely denied to liberal activists. Is this actually true? I've traveled abroad with my girlfriend before and all she had was her passport and entry visa to our destination. I mean the part about being required to have an exit visa (I know that some people are denied at the border). Is a passport shortcut around that or something? fart simpson fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Apr 10, 2013 |
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Apr 10, 2013 09:31
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But was Wonton denied by the Chinese side or the American side?
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Apr 10, 2013 09:41
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Arglebargle III posted:Looks like I was wrong. Somebody told me recently about getting their exit permits from China but it must have been a problem in translation. I think they were using English and might not have got it quite wrong. Well that's one of the things about China, isn't it? Despite the fact that I know a bunch of international traveler Chinese citizens and I've traveled abroad with them and I'd been told that they don't need an exit visa, I'm still open to the possibility that I'm somehow wrong.
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Apr 10, 2013 10:52
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It took me more than a month to get my American passport. That doesn't sound all that long to me.
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Apr 10, 2013 15:27
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Although I expect most goons with Chinese significant others already know they shouldn't expect a 99% chance of approval on the visa.
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Apr 10, 2013 16:32
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Adrastus posted:Is there? I myself have never perceived any aversion to homosexuality from mainlanders, though granted its been a while since I was last there. It was just a thing that nobody knows or cares about. In a discussion with some 23 year old interns at my office in China, several of them said if their best friend since childhood came out of the closet, they would completely cut off contact and cease being friends.
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Apr 14, 2013 06:05
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How much interaction have you had with mainland Chinese people? It's not exactly a rare sentiment.
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May 9, 2013 02:55
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I wonder how that guy rationalizes the treatment of Filipinos with his belief that Hong Kong isn't racist.
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May 30, 2013 11:50
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Also my time in Singapore was limited, but it seemed like it would blow Hong Kong out of the water in multiculturalism rankings. And it isn't even that far away.
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May 30, 2013 12:12
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Bloodnose posted:Chinese national, HK permanent resident, can't get a dependent visa for his wife. That's weird. Is it that hard for foreign-born wives to come to Hong Ko- ohhhhhhh the guy is brown! He was born in Pakistan and became Chinese. Well, no one can really become Chinese. Better deny his wife's visa to keep him from pumping out fake-Chinese brown babies. But I thought Hong Kong was the least racist and most multicultural city?
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Jun 5, 2013 09:30
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What do students in China learn in their political classes? I've been told that they've read excerpts of Marx and Lenin but people don't generally seem to know anything about it.
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Jun 9, 2013 02:27
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I am anti-rich and I agree with most of what you just said.
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Jun 11, 2013 10:55
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GuestBob posted:Pretty much the only way you are going to get Chinese people to buy consumer goods is if you cover them in gold leaf so they become an investment of some kind. Our consumer goods sales in China are growing really fast and at this point we're selling tens of millions of USD of basically iPod docks per year.
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Jun 25, 2013 03:58
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GuestBob posted:So if I want someone in China to buy my washing machine then I need to have it made by Apple? It's no good for Chinese companies if the bulk of income is spent on imported products and not time honoured domestic brands such as Supor, Haier and Flying Pigeon. No, I don't think that's necessarily the case. But there is a (not exactly undeserved imo) common perception that imported goods are generally higher quality, or at least more reliable. That's a tough obstacle, especially since in a lot of cases it's absolutely deserved. Also it's not completely bad for Chinese companies anyway, since a lot of those same "imported" consumer goods are actually designed and manufactured by Chinese companies. But given the choice of a good product for a good price made by a Chinese company, a lot of people will buy it.
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Jun 25, 2013 06:59
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caberham posted:Hongers don't even know where Wenzhou is and are hopelessly dumb when it comes to mainland Geography The geographic ignorance isn't just a Honger thing. I've met some people here in Shenzhen that can't even point to their city of birth on a map of China. And one of my coworkers thought Australia was an island off the coast of Europe.
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Jun 25, 2013 08:10
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In general, Hongers are pretty ignorant of the mainland and are stuck in the 1980's concept of a poor industrial wasteland. Not that the modern China is perfect, but the rapid changes China goes through for better or worse is truly incredible.
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What about all the almost but not quite Han groups, like the Zhuang? Most of the time you wouldn't even know they're not Han unless they tell you.
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Jul 7, 2013 16:13
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Longanimitas posted:They don't have to, this is just dumb paranoia. Chinese milk powder is much safer now than it used to be, and Chinese women still have breasts. Why do you trust these companies again?
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Jul 28, 2013 01:21
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Blackbird Fly posted:Thoughts? Just post it. Nothing will happen.
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Aug 20, 2013 08:28
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I'm pretty sure you could cram 8 bangladeshi guys into furnished shipping container.
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Aug 22, 2013 06:18
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I don't think dried, cured meat should be considered "raw" and you definitely shouldn't steam it.
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Aug 24, 2013 15:30
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Dr. Tough posted:This one is easily the most chortle worthy of the "beautiful female journalists at two sessions" This article is really creepy
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Aug 26, 2013 13:24
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) compared to People's Daily. Also I noticed in a linked picture article that Chairman Mao's grandson appears to have been replaced with a sitcom character.
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Maybe it's time for the south to rise. They never stopped having siblings down south.
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Aug 27, 2013 10:31
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