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China, by focusing its economy on manufacturing, has been able to make itself an industrial powerhouse across the world. With its rapid industrial progression, there has been at times, a de-emphasis on the quality of its goods being produced. Pet food was found to be containing toxic material causing kidney failure, and just today the FDA curbed the sale of five seafoods farmed in China, also found to contain poison and cancer causing materials. This can have ill-effects on the United States, for the obvious reason that these foods are killing us, and the not so obvious reason that these imported foods make up a large part of our food market in the United States. These seafoods, for instance, account for 22 percent of our total imports of seafood from abroad, according to the New York Times. Food is not the only sector of concern: a Chinese made automobile recently receive a 1-star rating in European crash tests. The car basically collapsed in on itself, causing anyone inside to die. In June 2007, 450,000 steel-belted radial tires were realized to be defective because they lacked a key safety feature, likely causing many fatal accidents. Toy trains and toothpaste have also been realized to be poisonous.

But there are also consequences for China in all of this. With China rapidly progressing its reputation from a cheap supplier of goods to a deadly supplier of goods, less countries will accept China’s reasonably priced goods. China’s economy depends on its exporters more than its importers depend on China. If scandals such as this continue to develop, the Chinese government will ultimately be forced to intervene, establishing new quality controls. The United States depends on Chinese goods as a matter of economic convenience, however China depends on the United States and the rest of the industrialized world as a matter of economic survival. However, the United States and others should not patiently wait for this change to come about, but should instead put economic pressure on Chinese manufacturers and the Chinese government to quickly initiate reforms and minimum standards. This economic pressure can be accomplished by importing more goods from other countries, thereby forcing China to clean up its act before Chinese imports are allowed to go back to pre-scandal levels. In the meantime, who can tell me where I can find some rock-bottom prices?

Last 5 posts by Iacopo

• Capitalism in the Motherland - January 4th, 2008

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The China: It’s To Die For by New School Politics, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.