Comment by Rinzler89 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Rinzler89 | Hacker News Reader

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> - China and their global junk manufacturing industry

And who orders, buys and pays for all the junk? The western consumers. Who offshored their own dirty manufacturing industry to China due to their lack of workers/human rights and environmental protection? The west. Which companies profited the most from this offshoring to China? The western ones. Same for the textile/clothes industry.

So I think you're looking at the wrong elephant. Look at your elected leaders first for failing to regulate "free trade" for the sake of profiteering at the expense of the environment.

The hypocrisy of the rich western nations blaming the environmental damage on the poor countries to which they knowingly and willingly offshored their dirty industries to for profit, is mind boggling.

Also, the hypocrisy of western tech companies when dealing with China is equally grandiose:

  -China's CCP: "So US big tech, you will have to host your data here and build backdoors to your services for us so we can read all your customer data and spy on your users here. Take it or leave it."
  -US big-tech: "Yessir! Right away CCP! Which other way should we bend over to make money in China?"

  -EU regulators: "So we're gonna need you to be upfront to your users here about your privacy invasive tracking and give users and opt-out option, and also not block your smaller competitors from accessing your gate-kept market places"
  -US big-tech: "Noooo! That's tyranny! Uncle Sam help, your poor tech monopolies are being oppressed by the Europeans."

No I'm with you, the multinational corporations are a major culprit in this.

It's the consumers first and foremost. The multinationals are just doing what's in their best interest.

Multinationals are not blameless even if consumers ultimately create demand. It was them that has been working overtime for around a century now developing marketing and figuring out how to manipulate human psychology to convince consumers to buy as much as possible, creating the culture of consumerism we have today.

Consumers didn't ask oil companies to run multi-decade campaigns of lies. Your second sentence is accurate but incomplete - the management of multinationals did what was in the best interest of the management.

What is the purpose or context of this thinking? To infantilise and absolve China?

To put the blame in the right place, perhaps? Obviously China (and its government) has its own responsibilities as well, but it all started with Western companies (and the Western lifestyle)

China said yes to all those things for Western money. They could've said no, they could've put in restrictions to lower their profits and improve conditions. Don't act like China is some poor puppy bullied around by the West.

>China said yes to all those things for Western money. They could've said no

Terrible argument. If it's not gonna be China, it's gonna be Vietnam, or Bangladesh, or Pakistan, or Sri Lanka, or whoever the rich west will deem fit to host their dirty industries at the most rock bottom prices so they can make a profit.

So again, is really all China's or $POOR_NATION fault, or the West's fault for constantly bidding the poor countries against each other in a race to the bottom in terms of human rights and environmental destruction for the sake of profit?

Just blaming the poor countries claiming that "well, the poor countries should just say NO to hosting the west's dirty industry", is incredibly stupid and short sighted.

So, in your mind, China's industry is really the West's? Also, China is poor? Just a poor passive obedient victim of the West's desires?

Do you really think that China would not have industrialised if not for Western companies? Nothing about China's history shows that that's remotely true.

In fact, outsourcing was only possible because of the various industrial plans that China had put in place in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, all of which prioritised building equivalent capacity to what existed in the West and the USSR.

Moreover, China was destroying its environment in the 1950s already, long before it even allowed real trade with the West.

Let's treat countries as responsible actors in their own right, not as mere non-independent reactors to Western actions.

>China was destroying its environment in the 1950s already

To be fair, every country was destroying the environment, even in the west, well after the 1950's as well.

Not quite to the same extent, or nearly as late. China's Four Pests campaign, for instance, ran from 1958 to 1962 and was ecologically disastrous.

Meanwhile, in the US you already had strong conservationist movements starting up, leading to the creation of the EPA by 1970.

While China finally adopted some environmental protections in 1979, it wasn't until the late 1980s/early 1990s that they could override industrial development in key situations

> Not quite to the same extent, or nearly as late. China's Four Pests campaign, for instance, ran from 1958 to 1962 and was ecologically disastrous.

Operation Ranch Hand ran 1962-1972, so that's a pretty lazy snipe.

I don’t see how the two are comparable.

While Ranch Hand was indefensible and US leaders should have been prosecuted for it, the scale of it is minuscule compared to the ecological damage of the Four Pests campaign.

You could say the same about Western countries. They could've said no, put in restrictions to lower their profits and improve their conditions. They are richer, so they're more capable of doing all those same things than a poor developing country like China used to be.

playing the blame game is a trap where the polluters win and breathing humans lose because all it does it cause stupid delays and distraction

To note that there are drivers of pollution around the world, which we could address right here at home too, or at least cooperate

The purpose of this is to absolve China of any and all responsibility, and put maximum blame with the West. Apparently the West is in complete control of China.

What is the purpose of any division? A molecule of CO2 is fundamentally identical regardless of its country of origin. It's a worldwide problem, and ultimately our inability to cooperate as one world will be the undoing of us.

You can blame China all you want and nothing will change but if western countries buy less of their junk they'll need to adapt somehow

The blame resides with the demand side / consumers.

And the fact the lords of capitalism only care about power and bank account size, and the scienze/religion of economics can't see further than three months into the future.

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