Sunday 29 April 2012

Should we boycott products made in China? By Sophie


Every day, millions of our Dollars and Euros are being sucked into a country whose government desires no less than the destruction of the United States and the European Union.

Aren’t you fed up with seeing "Made in China" products everywhere? We are surrounded by low quality, products. China is the first exporter in the world. Whereas Western countries are affected by the financial crisis started in 2008, China has resisted the crisis and its growth rate keeps on rising and even reached more than 10% in 2010. Western countries are clearly contributing to China’s prosperity by buying cheap Chinese products. And our economy is definitely suffering as a result...

There are more and more relocations which provide jobs for the Asian community while our unemployment rate is increasing. In France, it reached nearly 10% in 2011. In Spain, over 20% of the workforce is now unemployed!

When you buy a sweatshirt or a pair of shoes, or whatever, made in China, you are also condoning child labor and the violation of human rights. Many products are made in sweatshops or in factories, often by young kids, where the conditions of the workers are terrible.

Now don’t you think it’s time to take a stand against the invasion of Chinese products?

5 comments:

  1. I’m in two minds about this question. On the one hand, I agree with Sophie, I think we should boycott Chinese products. First, in so far as, as she says, China doesn't respect human rights: there are still labor camps and the freedom of the press doesn’t exist. Workers are paid very badly. All this leads to unfair competition. Factories of developed countries are outsourced and unemployement rises as a consequence in these countries. Futhermore, there are many problems with Chinese products: the quality is often poor and there many problems in the component parts of products, for example lead in children’s toys...

    On the other hand, the world is not guided by morality. And, economically, it’s very difficult to boycott Chinese products. As their products are cheaper than ours, if we boycott them , there will be a loss of our purchasing power. Moreover, Chinese products are everywhere and China produces 7 out of 10 watches for example. If you don’t want want to end up without a stitch, you are obliged to buy clothes made in China. China represents nearly 15 percent of the world trade in textiles and clothes.

    So, I’m for the boycott of Chinese products but it’s impossible to implement it in this globalized world. But I think we can add more rules concerning world trade in order to avoid the main problems.

    Thibaud Berard

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  2. I agree with Thibaud only on one part of his speech [:)]. I think that we should boycott chinese products one part because they are low quality and in an other part they are made by children who work very hard, they are ill-treated. Moreover this country doesn't respect the human rigts mading his products.

    In the other part I don't agree with Thibaud when he says that it's impossible to boycott chinese products. I also think that it would be a good thingh for french industry. Actually, if we boycott chinese products we would be forced to stop the relocation abroad to meets our needs and then we would decrease the unemployment rate!

    Romain BULON

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  3. The problem is if we boycott chinese products, there are also a lot of other country in the world which sell products like chinese with a low price... So that's not going to change a lot of things, and nobody is going to agree with that because for exemple, with a low price, people can keep more money to buy something else, so the purchasing power increase.
    And the fact that french industry suffer from the work area (especialy textile) is a good opportunity to do a reconversion of the different jobs which suffer from other contry because the textile in France is to much expansive, its more interristing to do a specialization in other work area.

    So finally, the boycoting of Chinese product is finally, not the solution.

    Loïc GEELHAND

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  4. The problem is if we boycott Chinese products, there are also a lot of other countries in the world which sell low price products... So it's not going to change a lot of things, and nobody is going to agree with that anyway because with low cost products, people can save money to buy something else, so their purchasing power increases.
    The fact that French industry (especialy in textiles) suffers is in fact a good thing, an opportunity indeed to change jobs. Textile in France is too expensive, we should specialize in other areas.
    Boycotting Chinese product is not a good thing!
    Loïc GEELHAND

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  5. First of all, I think we should ask another question which is quite different: CAN we boycott Chinese products?! Indeed, I once heard my mother saying that she had just come back from a shop, and that she had wanted to buy a product made in France, or at least in the European Union, but there was none! All the products were made in China or in other countries far from us. A boycott would thus appear to be impossible...
    I think that we should refuse to buy Chinese products. We know that more and more people pay attention to where a product comes from. We could compete with China, but we need to make quality products. As Thibaud says, the quality of Chinese products is often poor, and we have knowledge and technologies that they don't have. That could make the difference...
    However, we have to agree with the fact that the crisis has already decreased our purchasing power, so people are now looking more often for cheap products. There is a kind of vicious circle : we buy Chinese products, so we help the Chinese industry and our unemployment grows. Our purchasing power thus decreases, and so we buy even more Chinese products, etc.
    In conclusion, I think we can compete China thanks to our knowledge and technologies but it will be hard, especially as we are "invaded" by these products. We can't always choose what we want, and in difficult times people often only wonder : "will we still have the same purchasing power tomorrow?" If we can't answer that question, then why wonder about things that may happen in many years?
    François Bauduin

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