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Comment by sgjohnson | Hacker News Reader

> this needs to come through politics and government.

There's nothing western politicians can do to fix working conditions in China.

Embargo them? The working conditions in China won't get any better, and you'll simply put a lot of Chinese out of work by doing that.

Higher tariffs? That's just a tax on importing goods for China. While it helps the domestic manufacturing sector, it still does nothing to fix the working conditions in China.

Consumers suddenly start caring? The same as the "higher tariffs" scenario.

Any other ideas?

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There is something western politicians can and should do to help working conditions outside the first world and it is exactly that: nothing.

I'd hope most people are familiar with the fact that the west, and specifically the CIA, later the NED and many different gov-backed orgs have been hard at work making sure the working conditions of those countries are either kept as exploitative as they are, or if possible made worse. Of course China is a fairly specific case, and while there obviously have been numerous cases of interventionism (like in the Tian'anmen square riots or Taiwan as a whole) stopping the endless anti-Chinese propaganda couldn't hurt (which I'm not accusing this article of being). It's absolutely obvious to everyone that the US and allies would jump at the first opportunity to meaningfully destabilize China's economy so, no, I certainly don't expect anything positive to be done for Chinese workers by western countries, and especially not by a country like the US that should very much look inwards when it comes to working conditions.

Rules on products sold in the west. Most manufacturing companies already need to trace the origin of their components, so you could specify what products are and aren't allowed to be sold in the west.

And how would that help the working conditions in China?

You’d just shift the manufacturing to a less hostile environment, where the government doesn’t intentionally make it hard to do auditing on modern slavery. Like India.

I just don’t see how it would help the Chinese labour situation at all.

If china wants to deliver to the west they'll need to improve working conditions. Chinese companies will deliver at spec for lowest cost, if you up the spec, they'll adjust and increase cost adjustingly.

Yeah, until people just buy things on Temu which get shipped from outside the US and they don't even pay tariff, that sounds like a good idea.

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