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Should we stop outsourcing to China?
It’s the big debate.
Readers at the Underwire , part of the Wired blog network, weighed in with their comments following Sonia Zjawinski’s recent post, “How Many More Recalls Until We Stop Outsourcing to China?“
“China’s recent rash of export malfunctions in the past few months makes me wonder if doing business in China is worth the hassle, not to mention consumer deaths,” Zjawinski writes. “How many more recalls need to happen before we realize that the money saved on outsourcing just ain’t worth it?”
Some of the readers’ comments included the following:
- What alternative do you propose? Make everything inside the US. Then Mattel and other US companies will simply go out of business.
- Isolationism doesn’t work, it was tried before, including by the United States, and it just doesn’t work. If we stop outsorcing we will have situation in the consumer market similar to the final years of USSR. I’ve seen it, believe me, it ain’t no picnic.
- If we can get the point across to our out-of-country manufacturers that we are much more willing to take on the task and expense ourselves than we are risk the lives of children, pets, fish-eaters, and anyone who drives or brushes their teeth *remember the anti-freeze laced toothpaste?* perhaps the crippling of their economy will entice them to shape up, at which time perhaps some business could be given back to them.
- We’ve dug ourselves into an outsourcing hole and we can’t just cover it up. That said, companies need to be held more responsible for the products they outsource. I think a lot of companies simply outsource their schematics without thinking, or without caring, about who they’re doing business with.
- While I think adding chemicals to food and toothpaste is abhorrent, executing your top food and drug regulator (http://tinyurl.com/3dpbu4) to prove that you’re serious about improving product safety is just barbaric and primitive.
- “If you don’t know how to fix it then stop complaining” and shutup, then maybe someone with something useful to say can be heard.
- I don’t buy the idea that the Chinese government is responsible for this. What is the CPSC doing? Not much. The geniuses in Washington have been cutting the budget for years. If you check the news, it dosn’t even have a permanent Chairman. We seem to be offshoring manufacturing and outsourcing regulatory oversight to the Chinese government.
Discussion
4 comments for “Should we stop outsourcing to China?”
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Erica
Erica
© 2007 ResponsibleChina.com: Environmental sustainability, corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship in China.. 
There are 100 other countries to outsource to and trade with. The US has done without China during most if its existence, it can do just fine without China going forward. We outsourced to plenty of other countries before China and things were just fine, now we’ve made ourselves dependent on a filthy, totalitarian junkyard of a country.
Reading that first sentence, I thought maybe this had something to do with faulty bras…..
Anyway, nhyrc’s ranting aside, the comments strike me as being rather childish and seriously ill-informed. As a gross generalisation. Take this, for example:
“I think adding chemicals to food and toothpaste is abhorrent”
Well, how do you think toothpaste is made? It’s certainly not a naturally occuring substance. Not that naturally occuring necessarily equals good, anyway. And what do you think Western manufacturers do to produce all that highly processed rubbish that lines Western supermarket shelves, regardless of whether the products are made in China, the US or Europe?
“*remember the anti-freeze laced toothpaste?*”
Remember the E. coli outbreaks traced to American farms?
My point is, nobody is innocent; China is just a convenient scapegoat.
Chris,
You still can’t discount the fact that the US and Europe did just fine without China during the entire industrial revolution up to now.
Btw Einstein, E. coli is naturally occurring and common, all you need to get an infection in your intestines is ONE E. coli bacterium, also known as a colony forming unit (CFU).
The truth is that China is a abhorrent abomination and needs to be taught a lesson. There are plenty of other countries willing and able to produce quality exports.
Stop being a China cheerleader.
.