Should We Boycott China?

While everyone is so self absorbed with Anna Nichol, we aren't focusing on important issues here when it comes to China. First it was the dog and cat food. Now, we're talking about fish food.

On May 10th, Fish feed made with a contaminated Chinese ingredient was distributed to about 120 fish hatcheries and farms, across the United States and Canada. The feed was manufactured by one company in Canada that purchased Chinese wheat flour which was purchased from a different Canadian company contaminated with melamine and mislabeled as wheat gluten. On top of this, a second imported Chinese vegetable protein was further contaminated by melamine. This chemical we are learning so much about lately is used to make plastics and can distort tests to make ingredients like wheat flour to appear more protein rich than they are. Animals and fish need more protein than carbohydrates to improve growth.

The FDA said out of 198 U.S fish feed customers, just 50 or 60 are likely to have received these products with the contamination. And two of those customers farm fish for human consumption.

That's it! I've had enough! First it's my pets, now it's the fish I eat! Well, I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of what is going on here with China. It's bad enough you walk into a store and all you see are cheap China products that we import. Yeah, sometimes you can get a good deal and it feels good on an individual basis. However, as I get into the second half of my life, I am becoming more globally conscious whether it is the environment or economic related.

What happened to us as a nation? We used to care. If you grew up in the 60s and 70s you know what I'm speaking about. Where did our consciousness go to? Our wallets? It's time for all of us who grew up pre-1980 to consider what we are doing to our world and our country specifically. We are obligated to set standards for our children as they become our next leaders. This can become more serious than just economics.

China is already the world's third-largest trading nation and it appears as if it is acting on its way to become the largest globally. Since the 1950's, our world trade system had flourished because we have been involved with countries that believe in mutual trade that benefit both parties. Trading with China only benefits China and they won't care if it hurts other global economies.

We only have ourselves to blame. Like the gold rush of California, we saw the same with companies going over to China to become rich quick. So what we ended up doing was fueling their economy with our dollars. We provided them our jobs! And as consumers, you might say we have no alternative but to purchase these products. But we do. No one takes a position on issues like this as we did in the 60s and 70s. Just by all of us boycotting the largest supporter of China, Wal-Mart, we could send a message. Wal-Mart is our biggest purchaser of Chinese made products. Of course their lower prices help those less fortunate here. However, at the same token, I would choose to pay these less fortunate out of my taxes a subsidy to shop somewhere else. In the long run, it hurts us as a whole.

Here's a little background on what China is doing.

China's economy has been focused on an undervalued currency system in order to promote their export-led economic growth. One economist, Morris Goldstein of the Peterson Institute feels that the Yuan is 40% under value than it should be. This has helped China from a globally competitive standpoint with their exports. It has stimulated so much growth in jobs and production of goods that for the first time, the Chinese people are experiencing more wealth than ever. An example is Chinese are purchasing cars. Even though there is still a small percentage of Chinese who own vehicles, it is rapidly growing. From 2006 it has increased 25%. Foreign capital in China increased quickly in this sector. There's nothing wrong with that, but when we, the USA, improves China's expansion, don't you suppose it's only fair we get some kind of balance in return? That's what fair trade was designed to be.

Boycotting does work. I recall back in 1977, Elaine Lame, became the first grassroots organizer to boycott Nestle. The basis was Nestle was selling its baby formula to underdeveloped countries that could not use the product safely. She and a handful of people were so outraged by this due to the aggressive marketing Nestle and American Home Products were doing. Nestle's actions resulted in one million infants dying per year. The disease was called "bottle baby disease". After 7 years of boycotting, Nestle made significant reforms on their marketing.

What we need is more of an equilibrium with China so that we can benefit from their growth that we helped spurn. We need to start caring again like we did in the 60s and 70s when people were conscious of life's balances. And when those balances went out of whack, you could always find a voice out there protesting in order to correct it.

If you're interested on knowing what is made in China, here is a sight you can browse:

http://www.made-in-china.com/products/catlist/listsubcat/108/00/mic/Apparel_Accessories.html

Like I said, I'm tired of this. I'm tired of seeing all the foreign products in our apparel. I want to see the Union label again...Made in the USA.