Quality and Safety Issues

13 August, 2007

Can you trust Chinese-made products now?


In the late 1950s, Mao Zedong sought to make China an industrial power by encouraging peasants to ignore their farms and build backyard iron smelters. The nationwide project was an abject failure, and a cause of a major famine. Nearly fifty years later, China has become an industrial powerhouse beyond Mao's wildest dreams. But that success is now threatened by an ever-growing list of safety problems with Chinese-made products. First it was pet food contaminated with melamine. Then toothpaste containing diethylene glycol. Two weeks ago: a huge recall on Thomas & Friends toys coated with lead paint. Earlier this week, we learned about unsafe tires that need to be recalled. Can we no longer trust products made in China? (source: ConsumerReports.org)


In spite of any connection between the news above and my experience, this reminds me the trip I made to China years ago. The country is dirty, so as the people itself. I wonder how they survive living around the dirtiness! They might get used to it or they might have some kind of antibody to neutralize uncleanliness.

What bothers me most is why the American corporations that contract to manufacture and purchase these "cheaper" products from China tend to be Chinese characters, called GREED, who put the motto "profit is driving the irresponsibly corporate behavior" beyond any other set-goals. *confused mode*