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 Made in China, But What is the Cost?

Nadia Saint, Assistant Editor, looks at China, the emerging giant of the New World Economy 

Bourgeois Poverty: the Cultural Cost

Since its membership of the World Trade Organisation began in 2003, China's economy has continued to thrive at an unprecedented rate. The massive increases in export revenue and rapidly expanding gross domestic product have consolidated China's business status on a global scale. Official statistics show an enormous rise in China's GDP - from just over US£2000billion in 1992 to a staggering $18232.1billion in 2005. Billions aside, the sheer rate of China's economic growth has impacted on the sphere of world trade: on July 18th, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that China's GDP has leapt another 10.9 percent.

The reasons for China's economic expansion are various. Much of it is a result of the economic 'out-sourcing' trend: the use of Chinese products and labour by developed countries in the West. Superficially, this is a mutually beneficial partnership: the Chinese economy is allowed to thrive while Western business can drive down costs and multiply profits. The 'made in China' phenomenon has become pervasive in the West, from plastic Happy Meal McFreebies to offshore bank call-centres.

However, the real cost of out-sourcing has to be considered. If Chinese factories can produce plastic 'goods' for a fraction of the cost in the West, it is only because of the pitiful wages and conditions of the Chinese workers. In this way, the West actually exploits the human cost of Chinese economic expansion. A well-educated but poorly-paid and highly-taxed workforce in China is merely perpetuated by foreign out-sourcing and investment. It is hardly surprising, then, that Chinese businesses attract over $55billion in new foreign investment each year. An expanding Chinese bourgeoisie continues to suffer with low pay, few rights in the workplace, and unsatisfactory political equity. Moreover, the repressive nature of Chinese government has proved to be problematic for workers' rights protesters. While millions have been lifted from poverty, a new poverty of the middle classes has been created.

Progress and Pollution: the Ecological Cost

The human and cultural consequences of China's rapid expansion are exacerbated by its pernicious effect on the environment. While political regimes and economic rises and falls are transitory, the vast rate of China's growth will have permanent and irreversible effects on the earth. Already, China has become a huge over-consumer of fossil fuels, and this has been reflected in the soaring prices of crude oil. As well as depleting the earth of its natural resources, the huge rise of China's production rate has caused dangerous levels of pollution, affecting not only the country itself but surrounding countries and the rest of the globe.

According to World Health Organisation statistics, six out of ten of the world's most polluted cities are situated in China; Beijing in particular has alarmingly high levels of sulphur dioxide, caused throughout the country by China's extensive coal-mining industry. NASA aerial photographs reveal a worrying veil of smoke covering Eastern China. As well as the toxic emissions belched out by China's factories, poisonous lead deposits are being secreted into rivers and streams: the river at Guangdong, for example, has forty four times permitted lead levels. Again, human quality of life is immediately affected, with people becoming ill and dying at a vastly increased rate as a result of polluted air and water.

The catastrophic effects of pollution in a global context barely need mentioning in a world which pretends to be ecologically aware. Climate change, global warming, and acid rain have become fixed collocations in contemporary media consciousness. Inevitably, however, economic growth seems to be a bigger priority for the world's governments than any counteracting conservational plans, and China is not the only culprit. The World Meteorological Organisation has revealed that 2005 was the hottest year on average since 1850; China's summer seasonal temperature for the year was also the highest since 1951. We hardly need to be reminded of the disastrous effects of pollution and climate change, but when we discover that Arctic sea ice was the lowest ever in 2005 and that the ozone hole was the third largest annually recorded, the real effects of global pollution are emphasized. Typically, land and people are sacrificed for financial gain.

In the West, we have already deforested, overworked, and polluted our lands, and yet we still have enough respect for our own human life to abide my minimum wage schemes. The high-profit fat cats who exploit China for low-cost goods and workforce disregard the human and ecological cost facilitated by expansion and exploitation.

The Future: What Can Be Done?

Despite the bleak ecological conditions caused by economic expansion, it should be known that Chinese authorities are becoming more aware of the pernicious effects of rapid production growth. The years 2006 to 2010 will see a five-year plan implemented as part of the China Medium and Long Term Energy Conservation Plan. This will seriously attempt to address the problem of China's massive energy over-consumption through incentive policies for private industries, strategies to make energy consumption more efficient, and raised public awareness of the problem. Furthermore, a ten-year plan was launched this year to plant trees over thousands of square miles of the country, in order to compensate for the previously government-advocated deforestation throughout the last few decades. Whether these plans will be effective or whether they are merely a diplomatic PR exercise is yet to be seen. However, the fact that they exist at all demonstrates the increasing awareness of ecological issues in the Chinese government and in its people.

As Westerners, we should also be aware of the dangerous consequences of the 'Made in China' trend. In a business-driven world, we tend to forget the human faces behind out-sourcing and exploitation. And this is a wider problem than the abstraction of 'globalisation' might imply. Rapid economic expansion in developing countries has a hidden human and ecological cost which can only be combated through greater awareness and understanding. PL

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To Advertise Here or in the Print Magazine call 020 7556 7052 or 07986 949 154 Editor at poetsletter dot com