THE CHINA PRICE: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage
I admire the book that journalist Alexandra Harney just published in 2008.
“Dotted
across the Chinese landscape are “cancer villages,” towns full of widown whose
late husbands worked in the same toxic industries, enclaves where women give
birth to babies with deformed limbs and other disabilities. Eastern Jianxi
province’s Shangshan village was once renowned for its gold mines. Today the
village is heavily in debt caring hundreds of farmers who contracted silicosis
working in the mines. Some of these “widow towns” owe their fate to
environmental pollution; others to a common workplace.” (p.57)
“More
than 200 million Chinese workers in 16 million companies are exposed to
dangerous working conditions. As of the end of 2005, China had recorded 665,
043 total cases of occupational illness; of these 606, 891, or about 90
percent, were pneumoconiosis, an umbrella term for a group of debilitating lung
diseases.” (p.57)
“In
a sign of the seriousness of the problem, Beijing has become increasingly frank
about the long-term effects of the country’s rapid industrial growth on public
health. ‘In the past few years, people ignored work safety amid fast economic
growth,’ Su Zhi, deputy director of the Ministry of Health’s law enforcement
and supervision department, said in 2004. ‘But vocational disease cases will
increase in the coming years… The troubles planed in the past will be exposed
in the coming few years.’ The Workers’ Daily, a Chinese newspaper, has warned
that pneumoconiosis will be the most serious social problem in rural China by
2010. One official claims that the spread of pneumoconiosis is sparking popular
protests.” (p. 58)
My conclusion:
Think again about the price you pay....
Think again how ethical it is
for you to say it's cool to buy so cheap.
The true cost of the Chinese price has people's lives at stake.
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