Chapter 20 was a rather depressing but non-surprising chapter to read. It talks a lot about the working conditions in China and how they, along with a few other factors, make it the easiest and cheapest way for American and UK companies to produce their products there. There are millions of manufacturing jobs within China, and this is a big appeal for Chinese citizens who live in rural areas because it offers them a chance to make real money and possibly move up class wise. This encourages them to spend a few years at least in one of these jobs despite their horrible working conditions. Another benefit China has in manufacturing over many other parts of the world is their speed at getting products made, shipping, and moving raw materials. Everything is kept very close together or there are incredibly fast transportation routes between major hubs. This allows for China to get things done/made in a fraction of the time it would take other countries.
Chapter 21 expands a lot on the previous chapter. It talks about China still but in the context of a very large world-wide example, Nike. The way Nike was able to grow so much as a brand and become internationally recognized was through advertising and culture but through incredibly smart, though less than ethical, outsourcing of manufacturing to the cheapest bidder.
The part of the podcast episode we were assigned to listen to was also expectantly depressing. Cambodia was left behind by the United States, we gave them every reason to have high quality labor rights and they followed through with that having some of the best labor rights in the world. And instead of rewarding them and continuing to offer them good deals for it we left their whole country in a place where their only possible option to keep their economy alive would be to get rid of those labor rights. I wonder why the United States ended the deal and didn’t continue with it. I didn’t see a reason for it mentioned in the podcast and I’m very curious. Why was our government caring about human labor rights one day and leaving an entire country's labor force in the dust the next?
1 comment:
I really like the way that you interpreted sources here, especially chapter 20 and the podcast. I overall agree with your evaluations on chapter 20, and its a good point you made about how depressing working at one of these places really is. As for your podcast interpretation, I like how you explained it a the U.S. leaving Cambodia out to dry because that's essentially what happened.
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