Blog 4

     In chapter 20 of the textbook, the article by James Fallows "China Makes, the World Takes",  describes the conditions, work environment, and manufacturing culture of many factories and cities in Southern China. Fallows visited China and studied the environment of many factories in the city of Shenzhen, a manufacturing city that is rapidly growing with high rates of manufacturing factories sprouting up. Fallows finds that these companies are tough, work long hours, workers are paid very little, and most of these factories are manufacturing partners with a number of foreign countries. The article explains how the companies who partner with these large factories are very reluctant to tell competitors who their suppliers are in China that they are buying from. The article lists a number of reasons for the confidentiality of the suppliers, stating that they either take the "high-road or low-road". The high-road for these companies to keep confidentiality with their suppliers is that they are fast, efficient, and reliable, and they do not want to lose them to their competition and a low-road reason is because they do not want the public to know that they are partners with a work environment with the brutal conditions as some of the factories in China.

       These issues dealing with confidentiality between foreign countries and Chinese suppliers lead me to believe that these foreign companies know that they are exploiting people for low-wage work. I don't believe that there is a high-road for the companies to take to explain themselves, and if they can't be proud of where their product is coming from then they should reconsider their decisions of how the company is being operated. Foreign companies should reconsider partnering with Chinese suppliers that hold their workers in unsafe conditions that put their employees in danger, and pay them unfairly.