Comment by pavs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pavs | Hacker News Reader

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Can you explain why only Apple, when overwhelmingly majority of american consumer goods are manufactured/assembled in China?

Just to take Apple's example (they also rely on other asian countries for certain parts, ie. Korea & Taiwan comes to my mind right now), if they were to not rely on China to assemble/manufacture their products Apple products would have been even more expensive.

Also your iphone being defective has nothing to do with the fact that they were manufactured in China. While China made goods tends to be of low quality. High end computer gadgets like apple/dell goes through a certain high standard of manufacturing than your typical Chinese stuff. Companies tends to have a more hands-on approach to maintaining a certain standard and quality, which is generally missing in other chinese made products.

The problem is not that apple / google / MSFT invests and does business in China. The problem is that our government have legitimized Chinese style of government (a unique variant of communism), regardless how much they criticize on the side. Our government does not confront Chinese government directly. Its already too late to do anything now - we are too connected with their economy. If they go down - we go down, if we go down - they go down too.

The government can't do anything or the companies can't do anything without shooting their own leg. The only way we could pressure Chinese government is to start some kind of mass movement where we refuse to buy products manufactured in China (or similar government with questionable human-right records).

Its easier said than done, but the change has to come from us.

the change has to come from us

Why? Do you have any other historical examples of consumers from one country pressuring another country to reform its government through boycott?

And why China? China has a significantly more organized and helpful government than most countries in the region (say, the ones in which most of your clothes are made, or where some of the raw materials for those gadgets are mined).

But most importantly, why do you feel the need, as an American consumer, to act on the relationship between China and its citizens?

>Why? Do you have any other historical examples of consumers from one country pressuring another country to reform its government through boycott?

I don't know of any example but do you really need a precedence to follow for everything or can you not take extraordinary steps to counter extraordinary circumstances?

>And why China? China has a significantly more organized and helpful government than most countries in the region (say, the ones in which most of your clothes are made, or where some of the raw materials for those gadgets are mined).

The subject of this thread is China's human-rights record. More on next question.

>But most importantly, why do you feel the need, as an American consumer, to act on the relationship between China and its citizens?

You can't have double standard in reference to human rights. You (government, not you as in _you_) can't cry foul about communism and human rights record and use it as a reason to sanction some countries and even use it as (one of the) reasons to go to war at the same time blissfully do business with China. As far as human rights go, China is one of the worst offenders out there, and by human-rights I don't only mean not being able to search the internet unrestricted. If you say something against the government or try to start a movement, they will hunt you down and kill you. You can't even talk about those killings they will hunt you down and kill you. You don't hear about it much because they do a very good job of keeping things tight - do some digging around and you will see what I am talking about. You can start from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China

If any other country did what China does, there would have been massive sanctions if not war. But of course, no one wants to fight with a nuclear-powered military strong nation.

If any other country did what China does, there would have been massive sanctions if not war

Wow, calling for war with China, really? Did you support the war in Iraq for the same reasons? Do you also support war with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Pakistan?

Well for me, I used to be a Chinese citizen. So there's some emotional obligation for me to try to not let the country go to shit. For other Americans, there should be a moral obligation to make sure developing countries are doing so correctly.

> Can you explain why only Apple, when overwhelmingly majority of american consumer goods are manufactured/assembled in China?

because the overwhelming majority of consumer goods i buy are from apple.

I think China has a bad enough reputation that advertising that it's not made in china won't be like shooting yourself in the leg. Although I also agree that it is vastly the governments (and thus our) faults for Initially legitimizing the government (or maybe nixon's fault). Unfortunately government action would be too strong an attack, and so would a massive boycott. so that's why a slow public opinion change, like my opinion, that actually makes it advantageous for companies to not make their crap in China.

If apple stopped making stuff in China, I might just upgrade more often. Now multiply that times every apple fanboy/girl and it's apple no longer has to shoot it's own foot.

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