In my opinion Temu and Shein are examples of Chinese companies picking up shitty western business practices and taking them to their logical conclusion. Amazon already resembles AliExpess thanks to hundreds of drop shipping "brands" - Temu just consolidates all this activity. Western "fast fashion" brands already exploit and abuse cheap foreign labor, Shein just shaves down the margins. None of this is really new, Temu and Shein just take a little less margin for themselves than the hundreds of small drop-shippers operating on Amazon or companies like The Gap so they can compete on price.

I agree that this is, broadly-speaking, bad, but it has also been going on for a long time. Before Amazon, WalMart was hocking cheaply made stuff and driving mom & pop shops out of business. The one positive here is that Temu/Shein are much more explicit about what they are. It's one thing to spend $5 on a pair of shoes made with child labor. It's entirely another to buy shoes made under similar conditions for $100 because of marketing/branding.

I tell my mom the same about Amazon (sans the CCP thing), but it's hard to argue someone out of very cheap stuff that arrives the next day.

It gets easier every time some piece of shit arrives that's not as described, or is incredibly low quality - but it also gets drowned out by all of the "good enough" stuff that arrives as well.

Chinese child labourers have better conditions than the Bengali slaves and indentured servants who produce all my other clothes. I think I'll upgrade to Shein as a moral advantage.

> First of all, you’d support the CCP either directly or indirectly.

I am all in for supporting local businesses, but your preposterous unsubstantiated claims like that shouldn't be brought up in decent society.

It's just like saying by supporting your local business in UK you are supporting the ridiculous sunak and their atrocious policies. It is not.