'The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs' author Mike Daisey

One of the tragedies of Mike Daisey’s fabrications regarding Apple’s Foxconn factories are that they have made the conversation about Daisey and not about the very real abuses taking place in Chinese factories. All of the problems that Daisey identified are real and they are problems that are widespread. In other words, China’s labor problems are not about Apple, but about Walmart and Amazon and Dell and Microsoft and every major company that manufactures its goods in China.

All of this raises the question of how morally complicit we, as U.S. consumers are in the problematic labor practices of China. That such practices are a problem is not the question, they clearly are and have been condemned as such by Catholic Social Thought (CST) since its inception (For a quick summary of CST on labor practices click this link). What bothers me is to what extent am I complicit in such practices because I buy and use products made in China and what should I do about it now that I have this knowledge?

Part of the problem lies in the fact that it is nearly impossible to live in the U.S. without buying things made in China, especially electronics. The computer I am writing this article on was made in China, as were the monitors that I am viewing it on, and the external keyboard and mouse I am typing it on (incidentally, none are made by Apple). None of these items is particularly cheap, but none are as expensive as they would be if made somewhere other than China. This is perhaps the root of the problem, that the U.S. economy could not survive without the flow of cheap goods that China makes possible, especially as the real wages of most Americans have fallen significantly over the past forty years.

Another part of the problem is the complexity of global supply chains and of the Chines manufacturing process itself. Many factories subcontract work to “shadow factories” that operate under the radar and largely without regulation or monitoring. In a recent investigation of Walmart factories in China, Mother Jones’ reporter Andy Kroll found widespread deception and fraud among factories and among both Walmart’s internal auditors and some of its external ones. Factories that contract to companies like Walmart actively work to subvert Walmart’s own internal standards and fool or bribe those tasked with enforcing them.

The root of the problem, as I hinted at above, is the relentless pressure that U.S. companies put on Chinese factories to keep costs down and produce at an every more efficient and cheaper rate. This push is fueled both by a desire for corporate profit and and for inexpensive goods. Companies like Apple can make massive profits because they keep costs low and can then turn around and charge high prices for their premium electronic goods. Other companies make products that could never be sold at that rate of profit and depend on the cheap labor of China to make their businesses work.

Consumers also bear some of the responsibility for this situation with our desire for affordable or cheap goods and an unwillingness to pay what they are really worth. And while the declining wages of many Americans are part of this trend, not all the blame can be placed here. Many of the goods involved in this discussion are high-end, like Apple’s products, and are bought by a consumer base that has the financial freedom to make choices. These people, of whom I include myself, could have made other choices and must learn to if the situation is going to change.

The other thing that needs to happen is a radical reevaluation of the culture of corporations that sell their products in the U.S. As long as the goal and driving force of corporate America is profits, then nothing will change. It is this force that drives the pressure to make production lines cheaper and faster and this force that drives down real wages in the U.S. Corporations need to consider people before profits, another core teaching of CST, and until this happens nothing will fundamentally change.

[Image from mikedaisey.blogspot.com]

China’s Real Problems Being Lost in Daisey’s Fabrications by Br. Stephen DeWitt, OFM is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.