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Comment by throwawayccp | Hacker News Reader

This is why I stopped buying anything that comes form China. No more funding CCP.

Yup. I’m (trying) to do the same. Every little mindless purchase I used to make to fix some minor inconvenience slowly adds up to real harm for someone else at the hands of the CCP.

Please stop buying from China.

In fact, in recent times Lithuania has been a force for good against China, I’d suggest seeking out their goods if applicable to your needs.

Genuinely curious, what has Lithuania done to stand up against China? And any suggestions on potential things one would buy from them over China? I would like to buy more from countries and people who aren't whipped by the CCP.

They opened a diplomatic representation in Taiwan.

And refused to back down when China did its standard put-them-in-the-doghouse routine.

Stop buying from China means essentially buying nothing with a semiconductor. Unless you mean something else.

Well, there are many things in your life that you buy from China that don't have a semiconductor in it.

For instance, I was shocked to find out that a lot of "Brazilian" honey was actually rebranded corn syrup imported from China and cut with low-grade Chinese honey, this all to get around U.S. import restrictions due to the lack of quality/safety regulation in China.

It's expensive, it's tiring, it's hard. But, in the end I feel it's worth it for the safety of my family and others. Whether it's honey, a sketchily-soldered power supply, or some completely fake lithium ion battery for your vacuum that only has 25% of rated capacity and might burn your house down, it's best to stay away from the Chinese option if you can.

Honey is one of those things where you're best off buying it from a local producer, or not at all.

Totally agree. After spending tons of time trying to find a reputable supplier the answer ended up being either:

1) I need to befriend a local beekeeper 2) I need to pick up beekeeping

You may think, that's too much work but really the honey you're buying at the store stands a really good chance of simply being sugar with only a trace of honey. Not good for you.

The local honey unfortunately shreds my intestines. :(

But I haven't really had honey since then so the point is moot.

Buy locally produced food only. Most importantly never buy Chinese food it's toxic

If you buy Samsung stuff instead of Apple you are significantly reducing the amount of China made stuff.

No need to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

How do you even do that? I make an effort when I have a choice but so often it seems like there is no other choice.

For instance i still use 10y old Dell 14r laptop. When it became slow to run windows i switched to u Ubuntu and added SSD (not china made).

I might have purchased less than 10 made in china products in the past 3 years

Something is better than nothing

That Dell was still certainly made in China. And the SSD, while not manufactured in China, likely had components which were.

It's practically impossible to avoid it.

IMO, the best one can practically do is to just buy used.

It's not 0 support, but it's a lot less than buying new.

Used hardware usually has better support in Linux anyway.

I think the point is they haven't purchased a new one in 10 years. Therefore, no more purchase from China.

I mean Xi has been president for the last 10 years, so even that Dell would have supported ol' Winnie.

For someone with such a strong anti-china stance (enough to create a throwaway), I'd expect full devotion to the cause.

I think you're letting perfect be the enemy of good.

Laptop was purchased before XI became president.

Agree we can't avoid completely but still doing something is better than nothing.

I'd be very interested in this, but it seems hard to determine the extent to which a product was manufactured in China. Do you have any resources that help with this?

If that's your hill, add Turkey, India and Russia to the list. Brazil we'll know in few days.

What about Brazil? I thought Bolsonaro was out?

The list is actually much longer. Also the should consider to stop buying things made by prison labor.

The list is probably too long to keep up, realistically speaking. But I think any positive change in our spending habits (e.g. cutting off China and Russia) are good

I cannot think of any product that I have purchased in the past 50 years that was made in Turkey or India. I once bought a replacement carburetor for a woodchipper, and it was made in Russia, but that's all I've seen from there. These are not exactly manufacturing and exporting powerhouses, it's pretty trivial to avoid them if you want to, compared to China.

Turkey has a substantial textile industry. Something like the 5th or 6th largest textile exporter globally, and 3rd largest in the European market. My last set of bath towels were manufactured in Turkey, although my present set are from Pakistan.

If you bought anything pharmaceutical in the last ten years, chances are quite high it was manufactured in India using raw materials from China, and then either the formulation was done in the USA or the packaging was done in the USA to avoid having to label the source:

> (2021) "Here we use previously non-publicly available data to describe levels and trends in the manufacturing locations of the most commonly used prescription pharmaceuticals, off-patent generic drugs, intended to be consumed by Americans. We find that the base ingredients required for the manufacturing of these prescription drugs are overwhelmingly and increasingly manufactured in non-domestic locations, specifically India and China."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8109232/

In turn, the raw materials going into the India pharmaceutical pipeline tend to come from China more than anywhere else:

> "Even as the nation clamoured for banning products and cancelling contracts emanating from China, it’s apparent that, at least in pharma, it may not quite work out as imports from China account for 80% of total raw materials for making medicines, also called APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients)."

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/...

However, this doesn't get a lot of corporate media coverage, given that pharma is among the top advertisers.

I agree with funding cuts to the CCP, but there's an argument to be made that de-globalisation is a sure fire way to global conflict..

Mutual interests tend to keep things civilised

Russia has already demonstrated that McDonald's theory doesn't work.

WW1 already demonstrated that "trade keeps peace" can't be counted on, but some people never learn. The argument was made and soundly debunked many years before anybody here was even born.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion

How could "trade keeps peace" prevent Russia paying Serbia to start a war to gro it's empire?

Maybe, but globalization is how China got industrialized so fast in the first place. Help your enemy get rich, and then watch as they push you off your place. Not a smart strategy either.

Yes the difference could be that I am against US hegemony, and all for finally somehow growing up and attempting to avoid a catastrophic, planet annihilating conflict.

That would probably require a different point of view than labelling China as the enemy, or keeping them pre-industrial and poor in order to control them, as the US has done repeatedly in many south American countries.

That argument gets longer in the tooth by the day. It presupposes a certain amount of shared values.

> there's an argument to be made that de-globalisation is a sure fire way to global conflict..

You could make that argument, but that is dependent strongly on everybody being rational actors and there is plenty of evidence that dictatorships are not rational actors.

Is the US orchestrating coup after coup all over the globe a desirable rational actor ?

The reality is that it will take multiple generations for us to get rid politicians who when zoomed out act like teenage boys, and we can argue all we want.

USA - "Hello, my name is the US of A."

Everybody - "Welcome, US of A."

USA - "Today I haven't orchestrated a coup in (checks paper)[0] ... six years?"

*applause*

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

My money is on France for this one, but you never know..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Guinean_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

While individual consumers do such choices to feel better about themselves/feel like they’re doing something, big capital is pumping money nonstop to China.

It’s the same with Russia. It has been overflowed with money from EU before and during the war, and stop buying Russian goods will only affect individuals not buying it (and perhaps local sellers, too).

>"This is why I stopped buying anything that comes form China"

This is plain lie. At the very best you could stop buying end consumer products made and shipped from China. Assuming that things mad in the West are free from Chinese components / materials is a delusion

Why do you write this on a throw away?

Because they take notes, and they may come for the OP one day?

I want to, but it's tough. How have you been filtering things?

https://old.reddit.com/r/avoidchineseproducts/

That subreddit caused a huge Streisand Effect for me.

I saw so many cool, affordable products that didn't have any alternatives (or the alternatives were too expensive) I ended up buying even more things!

Thanks

Where was the device and it’s components you typed this comment out on made?

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