China will spend about $125 billion this year for defense.
The U.S. will spend about $725 or so.

In fact, U.S. military expenditures amount to more than three times as much as China and Russia *combined*.

So much for the military threat. Let’s move on to the economy. China’s GDP will total about $3.5 trillion this year. U.S. GDP will total about $17 billion. Bear in mind that economic productivity is dvidied across all of the people who contribute to the economy. Divide the U.S. GDP by 300 million. Divide the China GDP by 1,100 million. Pretty pathetic, actually.

Now let’s talk a little about consumer protection. The Chinese began embracing capitalism about fifteen years ago, but only in a substantive way in the past eight or ten years. America during the 1800’s was mainly agricultural. Capitalist industry really started to get cranked up at the turn of tthe 20th century. With industrialization came all sorts of nasty excesses: child labor, unsafe working conditions, unsafe products (I doubt any of us would care to eat meat processed in the Chicago packing houses of 1915). As a result of the excesses and abuses, we eventually passed all sorts of consumer, labor and environmental laws. But it took us nearly 70 years to get a lot of it in place, and it only came about due to strong public pressure.

China is just getting going in terms of its potential industrial and economic development. The excesses and abuses are evident already: from uncrontrolled labor conditions to uncontrolled toxic discharges into the air and streams. In other words, and for all of our own good, China has got to adopt and enforce strong, systematic safety regulation.

A boycott against China because of its military or economy is like a boycott against a dog for having a flea. The Chinese would laugh it off as you would a threat of boycott from your three year old.

A boycott aimed at pressing China for stronger consumer protection, however, is a direct attack on the Chinese brand. People don’t buy unsafe products. I don’t know how old you are, but many of your readers will remember the way we turned up our noses at Japanese cars in the 1970’s. That consumer response led to the Japanese cars of the 1980’s and 1990’s: Toyota and Honda built a commitment to quality that drove them to the top of the automotive world.

We can do the same thing to the Chinese. But only if we scream every time we find faulty goods and if we refuse to buy inferior goods.

That will solve the quality issue, but the problem of jobs in America is a different issue altogether. For that you are going to have to convince a lot of American couch potatoes to get off their duffs and get more American kids to succeed in school. The Chinese will graduate over 300,000 engineers this year. The Americans will graduate about 80,000. Chemical engineers, electrical engineers, computer engineers, aerospace engineers… you know, the kinds of folks who make our American way of life so cool and comfy. Kids in China have schools that are pathetic compared to ours in terms of the buildings and teacher salaries. But they have something we don’t: parents who aren’t afraid to make their kids work on their books. In America we emphasize playtime for kids: softball, basketball, soccer, t.v., computer games. China’s parents tell kids, work hard now so you can lead a better life later. American parents tell their kids, in effect, enjoy life now and take any old dead-end job you can find later.

So I guess my question is this: Do we need a Chinese boycott or a wake up call to American parents and students?

Typo: the U.S. GDP this year will be about $14 trillion. Point is still the same: we dwarf the Chinese economy.

This is really tough to do but u have my support and I’m gonna try my best.

We cannot only boycott goods, but wear these shirts to raise awareness of lead tainted products. See http://tshirtpimpz.com/lead

If you want to boycott Chinese products, please visit China Boycott Union at http://buyhard.net46.net. Here you can register details of products you put back on the shelf when you realized they were made in China.
BB.

Boycotting Chinese products is an excellent idea. Unfortunately, it is also an extremely difficult thing to do for most people. Many can afford only the least expensive alternative in any given shopping experience. That is usually a Chinese product. Avoiding Wal-Mart is a start, because they have abandoned their earlier bandwagon, which touted the sale of only U.S. made products. That was several years ago. By now Wal-Mart has undoubtedly given the Chinese economy, and the Chinese leaders, all the incentive they will ever need to continue, and even intensify, their abuses of workers, and contempt for those who express concern.

I will try to boycott all Chinese products, even though I know it will be very difficult to do so. I would also like to find someone who is creating T-shirts to publicize this cause, or to begin crating them myself if no one can be found to have already begun this tactic.

Dan

In answer to Frank, I feel it is unfair to adversarially pit, on the one hand, boycotting Chinese products, against increasing the motivation of our own youth to achieve better educational achievements. They can both be accomplished, but with almost equal difficulty.

Some of your other answers are also a bit weak. You imply that the strength of our economy is so superior to theirs that they pale in comparison. Take a look at our economy this past week (and probably for the foreseeable future, as well) and the picture changes a little. And then take a look at theirs. It is clearly on the rise for the reasons stated in any rationale for a Chinese product boycott. If you look at trends and directions rather than a static picture of “the way things are right now,” the picture gets a little clearer, and more typically represents the viewpoint that there is a change forthcoming, which will be detrimental to our economy, our competitive capabilities in a world economy, our future, and our best interests in perhaps every way imaginable.

But your most troubling statements are the following: “A boycott against China because of its military or economy is like a boycott against a dog for having a flea. The Chinese would laugh it off as you would a threat of boycott from your three year old.”

Those two statements are troubling for two very different reasons. The first is essentially correct, as I see it. It will be difficult to rationalize and execute, and they will TRY to laugh it off. But it is a faulty comparison. The better analogy, I feel, would be that the boycott for military and economic reasons is more like a boycott against the OWNER of a dog, for allowing it to have a life-threatening flea infestation. Which, of course, today can be viewed as a degree of animal cruelty, considering all the preventatives that are easily available.

But the second statement is the more troubling of the two. Comparing our boycott threats (and any other commentary) as similar in importance to those of a crying infant, is probably a statement of fact regarding the Chinese government’s lack of concern for our opinions, attitudes, interests or economic concerns. They won’t really need us for too much longer. They will be all too eager to soak up the so-called foreign oil we are in such a hurry to divest ourselves of. And with it, their economy will grow at an astronomical rate.

That is why a boycott is all the more important right now, while they still do labor under the illusion that they need our buying power.

Dan

I am not that concerned with boycotts which are designed to protect US or any other country’s economy or military, what troubles me is that every Chinese item I have bought has ended up, in a short space of time, on the rubbish dump. The planet cannot afford to waste the huge amounts of materials which are processed into goods and then quickly become landfill. I now look for the tools and other goods which are made anywhere except China. I pay double the price but get 10 times the service.