From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Wed Apr 10 2002 - 11:10:12 MDT
Wei Dai wrote:
>
> On Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 02:28:24PM -0500, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > Slave labor. As long a China tolerates slavery, the U.S. should
> > not be trading with them. I don't buy that cultural relativist
> > nonsense--slavery is wrong, always has been wrong, and always will
> > be wrong, and must not be supported or tolerated.
>
> By "slave labor" do you mean prison labor (laogai), people who
> voluntarily work for what we consider very low wages, abducting and
> selling of women into forced marriages, or something else?
>
> Please explain how buying a product made in China constitutes support or
> tolerance for slave labor. I've always felt good about buying products
> made in China, thinking that it would help stimulate economic and
> political development which will eventually ameliorate the above problems.
> If you're saying that increased trade actually hurts China I would
> certainly like to know why.
The largest employer in China is the Peoples Liberation Army, which owns
most industrial concerns, and runs the prison system, which it uses to
supply no cost labor to its manufacturing enterprises. Profits earned by
this conglomerate do not go toward increasing democracy, they go toward
financing an industrial system which has a state mandate to use force
against its employees as a matter of daily labor managment, not just
breaking strikes or killing off labor organizers.
Furthermore, PLA profits pay for the modernization of the PLA weaponry
targeted at Taiwan, Japan, and the US, including its nuclear ballistic
missile program, which can now target multi-megaton nukes at every major
city in the US.
The PLA produces most export goods, so the odds are that money you spend
on Chinese made goods goes directly to the current enslavement of the
Chinese people and the future enslavement of the US.
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