Crazy how fast they can pump out products when they have free slave labor and use the absolute lowest quality materials
Would you accuse the Seattle coffee industry that can roast and drop ship a custom bag of coffee in under 3 days of running on slave labor? Would you accuse the California software industry that can produce an MVP web app over the weekend of slave labor? No, of course you wouldn't. But we do that for China because we assume that it's still the world's sweat shop rather than the world's most sophisticated manufacturing hub.
China is the Silicon Valley of textiles (and it's the Silicon Valley of many other manufacturing industries). Chinese factories that generally pay better wages that afford much better conditions than other textile hubs and can pump out high quality products very quickly. Luxury clothing brands depend on China and generally not a lot of other textile-producing countries for their best quality items.
What Shein, Temu, and AliExpress are actually doing in the market is streamlining the overseas shipping process to cut down delivery times that used to be unreliable and take months with poor tracking and changing that to a generally reliable 8-12 business day shipping infrastructure.
Making the assumption that these websites only sell landfill-bound junk is an assumption that a competing business will make at their own peril. The way I see it, canceling my Amazon Prime subscription and moving most of those purchases to AliExpress has resulted in lower costs with equal quality.
I'm not saying that Shein's quality specifically is any good, but if you haven't been paying attention, clothing quality at mainstream Western stores like Walmart, Target, TJ Maxx, Ross, Zara, H&M, etc, isn't really much if any better than the low end no-brand stuff you find from China.
https://humantraffickingsearch.org/there-could-be-labor-expl...
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/starbucks-illegally-ke...
>Would you accuse the California software industry that can produce an MVP web app over the weekend of slave labor?
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2013-mar-20-la-fi-tn...
To me it seems odd that the statement “they have free slave labor” would be considered to be specific to one firm.
It’s legitimately 2 million enslaved Muslims imprisoned, working for $0.
https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites...
I do think this senate report is a little bit butthurt that their own regulations and trade agreements have enabled the business model.
It seems like it would be trivial to block out platforms in violation of US law via pressure by payment networks. That’s where I’m confused at the level of inaction given that this report includes a screenshot of a product page in violation. Visa and Mastercard can get Pornhub to vet their “suppliers” but they can’t do the same for Temu? They don’t even need a court order to do this.
The reality is the next generation of hard-tech and pretty much everything innovative in materials and manufacturing is coming out of China.
Like we are hearing a whole bunch of nonsense now about rare-earths and how China is nearly 100% of the supply of several along with processed graphene etc.
But what that story is missing is the less sophisticated stuff they were able to massively revolutionize also.
For instance most Western media declare the Belt and Road program a massive failure without looking at it's impact on things like nickel. Indonesia is now one of the worlds biggest suppliers because they a) banned export of unprocessed nickel and then lent hard into the BRI borrowing from China and allowing Chinese operated mines to setup their own processing there. As a result more of the value add is captured in Indonesia (the whole goal of all of this) and now Indonesia is one of the biggest supplies of nickle pig iron and stainless steel. How is this possible when giant (and heavily experienced) Western mining companies in places like Australia (which also have vast nickle reserves) were both established and ready to expand? Well that comes down to tech and expertise. China was able to design and build a new class of nickle smelters that were 2-3x as capital efficient as the Western equivalent plants in Australia.
What impact did that have? Well a giant reduction in the price of nickel of course as Indonesia went from nearly no output to over 1.8M tons.
There are tons of other examples, especially in anything related to the next generation of energy. Solar, batteries, nukes, all the inputs for the above like polysilicon etc.
The Chinese are fucking good at this stuff and pretending they just copy and do stuff cheap is not only a massive disservice to the Chinese engineers that make this happen but also a dangerous mistake if you want to go into business competing with them.
That feels like a rude stereotyping that is dismissive of the buyers. Maybe not your thing but no need to get judgy about it. The buyers know what they are getting.
They choose to buy Shein for their own reasons - a good practice is to assume people have good reasons (maybe other reasons than the quality or reasons that you don't understand).
As you say, "people know what they are getting", and that's fine.
I really don't understand some people's choices, but that's why it's interesting!
Saying it's just 'utter garbage' is to simple.
https://en.adererror.com/product/sig-trs-tag-hoodie-zip-up-0...
A hoodie like this could last you 10 years easily if you took care of it, made in South Korea, tripe weight cotton.
A cheap Temu hoodie, by comparison, would need to make it a single year, maybe only 6–8 months, to have equivalent lifespan / $. (If priced at $25, or like $15.)
Shoes: New Balance 990v4 (USA). Socks: Darn Tough (USA). Jeans: Texas Jeans (USA). Undershirt: Sloane (USA). Underpants: Duckworth (USA). Shirt: Gitman (USA).
The only non-US things I own tend to be shoes (Italy, Spain) and jackets (UK). Or gifts.
YES it does cost more. But here's the thing: I have fewer, nicer, things that last longer and I almost certainly spend way less annually than someone buying $7 shirts from Shein or Walmart clothes.
So, buying trash made of the worst possible materials by slave labor is a choice unless you are the poorest of the poor in which case you, and only you, get a pass.
A single digit percentage of Americans.
Keep on making excuses.
If everyone who didn't make minimum wage spent more consciously instead of just gulping down cheap Chinese goods like a hungry hungry hippo eats marbles and shopped locally economies of scale would make higher quality products available to everyone.
I don't participate in races to the bottom.
Your comment just proved my point.