4 ms·

This is the kind of take that is all too dismissive of China's textile industry. Would you accuse the Seattle coffee industry that can roast and drop ship a cu

by dangus 3y ago

This is the kind of take that is all too dismissive of China's textile industry. Would you accuse the Seattle coffee industry that can roast and drop ship a custom bag of coffee in under 3 days of running on slave labor? Would you accuse the California software industry that can produce an MVP web app over the weekend of slave labor? No, of course you wouldn't. But we do that for China because we assume that it's still the world's sweat shop rather than the world's most sophisticated manufacturing hub. China is the Silicon Valley of textiles (and it's the Silicon Valley of many other manufacturing industries). Chinese factories that generally pay better wages that afford much better conditions than other textile hubs and can pump out high quality products very quickly. Luxury clothing brands depend on China and generally not a lot of other textile-producing countries for their best quality items. What Shein, Temu, and AliExpress are actually doing in the market is streamlining the overseas shipping process to cut down delivery times that used to be unreliable and take months with poor tracking and changing that to a generally reliable 8-12 business day shipping infrastructure. Making the assumption that these websites only sell landfill-bound junk is an assumption that a competing business will make at their own peril. The way I see it, canceling my Amazon Prime subscription and moving most of those purchases to AliExpress has resulted in lower costs with equal quality. I'm not saying that Shein's quality specifically is any good, but if you haven't been paying attention, clothing quality at mainstream Western stores like Walmart, Target, TJ Maxx, Ross, Zara, H&M, etc, isn't really much if any better than the low end no-brand stuff you find from China.

NSMutableSet 3y ago
>Would you accuse the Seattle coffee industry that can roast and drop ship a custom bag of coffee in under 3 days of running on slave labor? https://humantraffickingsearch.org/there-could-be-labor-exploitation-in-your-coffee-cup-heres-how-it-got-there/ https://humantraffickingsearch.org/there-could-be-labor-expl... https://www.seattletimes.com/business/starbucks-illegally-kept-wages-benefits-from-union-workers/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/starbucks-illegally-ke... >Would you accuse the California software industry that can produce an MVP web app over the weekend of slave labor? https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2013-mar-20-la-fi-tn-seacode-was-first-to-try-to-put-foreign-workers-on-a-cruise-ship-20130319-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2013-mar-20-la-fi-tn...
- dangus 3y ago
  You're proving my point. Labor exploitation is all over the place, but people associate it with China for nationalist/xenophobic reasons.
  - NSMutableSet 3y ago
    No, I'm pointing out how you misunderstood their comment as an attack on all Chinese industry, when it was criticism of specific firms in a specific sector.
    - dangus 3y ago
      I didn’t take it that way because there was nothing about the criticism specific to one firm. I might be wrong there but that’s how I choose to interpret it. To me it seems odd that the statement “they have free slave labor” would be considered to be specific to one firm.
  - Jorge1o1 3y ago
    “Slave labor” is not a hyperbole or commentary on global wage differentials, or underpaid workers. It’s legitimately 2 million enslaved Muslims imprisoned, working for $0. https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/fast-fashion-and-the-uyghur-genocide-interim-findings.pdf https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - pests 3y ago
      We call so many things now slave labor when real slavery is being discussed people don't even realize it.
    - dangus 3y ago
      Thank you for providing something concrete. The original comment seemed like hyperbole to me, and now I’m leaving here better informed. I do think this senate report is a little bit butthurt that their own regulations and trade agreements have enabled the business model. It seems like it would be trivial to block out platforms in violation of US law via pressure by payment networks. That’s where I’m confused at the level of inaction given that this report includes a screenshot of a product page in violation. Visa and Mastercard can get Pornhub to vet their “suppliers” but they can’t do the same for Temu? They don’t even need a court order to do this.
IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
[flagged]
- alephnerd 3y ago
  [flagged]
herbst 3y ago
This. Cheap production is long moving away from china. I won't excuse it, but people have a deprecated image of the country mostly.
- jpgvm 3y ago
  The Western media has made it a constant meme is the problem. The reality is the next generation of hard-tech and pretty much everything innovative in materials and manufacturing is coming out of China. Like we are hearing a whole bunch of nonsense now about rare-earths and how China is nearly 100% of the supply of several along with processed graphene etc. But what that story is missing is the less sophisticated stuff they were able to massively revolutionize also. For instance most Western media declare the Belt and Road program a massive failure without looking at it's impact on things like nickel. Indonesia is now one of the worlds biggest suppliers because they a) banned export of unprocessed nickel and then lent hard into the BRI borrowing from China and allowing Chinese operated mines to setup their own processing there. As a result more of the value add is captured in Indonesia (the whole goal of all of this) and now Indonesia is one of the biggest supplies of nickle pig iron and stainless steel. How is this possible when giant (and heavily experienced) Western mining companies in places like Australia (which also have vast nickle reserves) were both established and ready to expand? Well that comes down to tech and expertise. China was able to design and build a new class of nickle smelters that were 2-3x as capital efficient as the Western equivalent plants in Australia. What impact did that have? Well a giant reduction in the price of nickel of course as Indonesia went from nearly no output to over 1.8M tons. There are tons of other examples, especially in anything related to the next generation of energy. Solar, batteries, nukes, all the inputs for the above like polysilicon etc. The Chinese are fucking good at this stuff and pretending they just copy and do stuff cheap is not only a massive disservice to the Chinese engineers that make this happen but also a dangerous mistake if you want to go into business competing with them.
  - herbst 3y ago
    That's exactly what I am thinking about, thanks for the insights. I am sure there are hundreds if not thousands examples like this with probably as much impact. See their massive investments in nearly any underdeveloped region of the world.

by dangus 3y ago

NSMutableSet 3y ago

>Would you accuse the Seattle coffee industry that can roast and drop ship a custom bag of coffee in under 3 days of running on slave labor? https://humantraffickingsearch.org/there-could-be-labor-exploitation-in-your-coffee-cup-heres-how-it-got-there/ https://humantraffickingsearch.org/there-could-be-labor-expl... https://www.seattletimes.com/business/starbucks-illegally-kept-wages-benefits-from-union-workers/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/starbucks-illegally-ke... >Would you accuse the California software industry that can produce an MVP web app over the weekend of slave labor? https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2013-mar-20-la-fi-tn-seacode-was-first-to-try-to-put-foreign-workers-on-a-cruise-ship-20130319-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2013-mar-20-la-fi-tn...

dangus 3y ago
You're proving my point. Labor exploitation is all over the place, but people associate it with China for nationalist/xenophobic reasons.
- NSMutableSet 3y ago
  No, I'm pointing out how you misunderstood their comment as an attack on all Chinese industry, when it was criticism of specific firms in a specific sector.
  - dangus 3y ago
    I didn’t take it that way because there was nothing about the criticism specific to one firm. I might be wrong there but that’s how I choose to interpret it. To me it seems odd that the statement “they have free slave labor” would be considered to be specific to one firm.
- Jorge1o1 3y ago
  “Slave labor” is not a hyperbole or commentary on global wage differentials, or underpaid workers. It’s legitimately 2 million enslaved Muslims imprisoned, working for $0. https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/fast-fashion-and-the-uyghur-genocide-interim-findings.pdf https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - pests 3y ago
    We call so many things now slave labor when real slavery is being discussed people don't even realize it.
  - dangus 3y ago
    Thank you for providing something concrete. The original comment seemed like hyperbole to me, and now I’m leaving here better informed. I do think this senate report is a little bit butthurt that their own regulations and trade agreements have enabled the business model. It seems like it would be trivial to block out platforms in violation of US law via pressure by payment networks. That’s where I’m confused at the level of inaction given that this report includes a screenshot of a product page in violation. Visa and Mastercard can get Pornhub to vet their “suppliers” but they can’t do the same for Temu? They don’t even need a court order to do this.

IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago

[flagged]

alephnerd 3y ago
[flagged]

herbst 3y ago

This. Cheap production is long moving away from china. I won't excuse it, but people have a deprecated image of the country mostly.

jpgvm 3y ago
The Western media has made it a constant meme is the problem. The reality is the next generation of hard-tech and pretty much everything innovative in materials and manufacturing is coming out of China. Like we are hearing a whole bunch of nonsense now about rare-earths and how China is nearly 100% of the supply of several along with processed graphene etc. But what that story is missing is the less sophisticated stuff they were able to massively revolutionize also. For instance most Western media declare the Belt and Road program a massive failure without looking at it's impact on things like nickel. Indonesia is now one of the worlds biggest suppliers because they a) banned export of unprocessed nickel and then lent hard into the BRI borrowing from China and allowing Chinese operated mines to setup their own processing there. As a result more of the value add is captured in Indonesia (the whole goal of all of this) and now Indonesia is one of the biggest supplies of nickle pig iron and stainless steel. How is this possible when giant (and heavily experienced) Western mining companies in places like Australia (which also have vast nickle reserves) were both established and ready to expand? Well that comes down to tech and expertise. China was able to design and build a new class of nickle smelters that were 2-3x as capital efficient as the Western equivalent plants in Australia. What impact did that have? Well a giant reduction in the price of nickel of course as Indonesia went from nearly no output to over 1.8M tons. There are tons of other examples, especially in anything related to the next generation of energy. Solar, batteries, nukes, all the inputs for the above like polysilicon etc. The Chinese are fucking good at this stuff and pretending they just copy and do stuff cheap is not only a massive disservice to the Chinese engineers that make this happen but also a dangerous mistake if you want to go into business competing with them.
- herbst 3y ago
  That's exactly what I am thinking about, thanks for the insights. I am sure there are hundreds if not thousands examples like this with probably as much impact. See their massive investments in nearly any underdeveloped region of the world.