jim_gregory
Senior Member
FWIW, I have been to, surveyed, and audited several factories in mainland China, Hong Kong, the coastal zone of Shenzen, Malayasia, Singapore and Indonesia. It took a few times to get over the expectation of finding downtroden laborers being whipped to produce more and more. The reality is that they are mostly 20 somethings faced with the option of staying on the family farm, bent over in a rice paddy or behind the family ox, or: working in a nice clean factory, living in nice new dorm buildings with others like them, wearing clean new western clothes, having cell phones and ipods and PS3's in their rooms, a choice or resturants in the company compound, ect... Kind of like what happened during the industrial revolution in the US. These youngsters are having a great time. And they know that there are many back on the farm who are far less fortunate. So rather than being downtrodden, they are living the "get ahead" dream. But they also know that if they screw up, don't make things right, there is a line standing outside the company gate of folks just waiting for their chance to live that life.
And, anyone selling product into the EU (which most of these factories are) has to meet the same ISO environmental standards as a factory in California. So the image of it being cheaper because they are poluting everything is also a fallacy.
Thanks for that! I produce sails from cloth made in the USA and finished in China. In fact my company started in Hong Kong and moved to the US in the 80's. The loft workers are very happy, highly skilled people. The facility is modern and spotless. I will say though that some of the larger cities and bodies of water are not at all pollution free. I also work with boat manufacturers over there and where we in the US would be wearing respirators they seem to be using only dust masks. It's a game of catch up though and they are moving in the right direction.
Oh..sorry for the hijack.