this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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China pollutes so much because the biggest consumer economy in the world deindustrialized and outsourced manufacturing to them.
China pollutes so much because George HW Bush and Bill Clinton pushed American jobs to China so CEOs could make bank on huge profits on cheap labor, unsafe work places, and near zero environmental regulation that was impossible in the United States. We built China by disregarding worker rights and the environment and we are paying for it dearly.
Why are we even bothering blaming politicians? Companies moved production over to cut costs and Americans wanted cheap shit. We could have all just bought made in America in the 80s if we cared, that would have been the time to make a stand while the transition was still happening.
It is government's job to make sure international trade is done according to some basic rules, including labor and environment. Business' only metric is profits.
The idea that businesses are only responsible to make profits is a newer one (can't say new it's been decades) and one that is trending away imho
You mean the boomers consumers are to blame?
You've never bought anything with "made in china" on the label?
Of course I have. Those were the best pencils for poppin' in elementary school.
I'd say the 70s was the pivotal decade there with the oil crisis, the party was effectively over for the Democratic FDR post-war reality, and the economic anxieties resulting from deindustrialization began to have impacts in the rust belt. Mao's death effectively ended China's Cultural Revolution, and Deng implemented economic reforms to open the country to capitalism, with a huge industrial push and creation of economic zones. While labor power in the US had achieved a great deal in to the 60s, the Taft-Hartley Act from back in '47 kneecapped the ability for labor to fight the death of the US industrial manufacturing core. Because of course capital is gonna capital, and if they can't exploit workers as well domestically they can in some other country. Especially when they use their hegemonic influence to keep other countries open to private capitalist exploitation, like arming fascist coups in even moderately socialist countries in the global south. The global fight against communism is a backdrop to all this.
And here we are today as these routes of externalizing the exploitation necessary to maintain this standard of living and consumer economy dry up, and this economic reality turns inward.
So did the US Presidents force China to not implement any environmental safeguards for their manufacturing? I don't think so.
Sure the corporations send the orders to China, and they pay for them, putting the money into China's economy. But China as a sovereign nation is still responsible for the pollution that it creates. They should implement strong environmental protection regulations to fix that.
I would prefer if American corporations sent their manufacturing orders to American factories, but I have no control over that or China's environmental regulations. They should both do better.