Just to take Apple's example (they also rely on other asian countries for certain parts, ie. Korea & Taiwan comes to my mind right now), if they were to not rely on China to assemble/manufacture their products Apple products would have been even more expensive.

Also your iphone being defective has nothing to do with the fact that they were manufactured in China. While China made goods tends to be of low quality. High end computer gadgets like apple/dell goes through a certain high standard of manufacturing than your typical Chinese stuff. Companies tends to have a more hands-on approach to maintaining a certain standard and quality, which is generally missing in other chinese made products.

The problem is not that apple / google / MSFT invests and does business in China. The problem is that our government have legitimized Chinese style of government (a unique variant of communism), regardless how much they criticize on the side. Our government does not confront Chinese government directly. Its already too late to do anything now - we are too connected with their economy. If they go down - we go down, if we go down - they go down too.

The government can't do anything or the companies can't do anything without shooting their own leg. The only way we could pressure Chinese government is to start some kind of mass movement where we refuse to buy products manufactured in China (or similar government with questionable human-right records).

Its easier said than done, but the change has to come from us.

Why? Do you have any other historical examples of consumers from one country pressuring another country to reform its government through boycott?

And why China? China has a significantly more organized and helpful government than most countries in the region (say, the ones in which most of your clothes are made, or where some of the raw materials for those gadgets are mined).

But most importantly, why do you feel the need, as an American consumer, to act on the relationship between China and its citizens?

I don't know of any example but do you really need a precedence to follow for everything or can you not take extraordinary steps to counter extraordinary circumstances?

>And why China? China has a significantly more organized and helpful government than most countries in the region (say, the ones in which most of your clothes are made, or where some of the raw materials for those gadgets are mined).

The subject of this thread is China's human-rights record. More on next question.

>But most importantly, why do you feel the need, as an American consumer, to act on the relationship between China and its citizens?

You can't have double standard in reference to human rights. You (government, not you as in _you_) can't cry foul about communism and human rights record and use it as a reason to sanction some countries and even use it as (one of the) reasons to go to war at the same time blissfully do business with China. As far as human rights go, China is one of the worst offenders out there, and by human-rights I don't only mean not being able to search the internet unrestricted. If you say something against the government or try to start a movement, they will hunt you down and kill you. You can't even talk about those killings they will hunt you down and kill you. You don't hear about it much because they do a very good job of keeping things tight - do some digging around and you will see what I am talking about. You can start from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China

If any other country did what China does, there would have been massive sanctions if not war. But of course, no one wants to fight with a nuclear-powered military strong nation.

Wow, calling for war with China, really? Did you support the war in Iraq for the same reasons? Do you also support war with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Pakistan?

because the overwhelming majority of consumer goods i buy are from apple.

I think China has a bad enough reputation that advertising that it's not made in china won't be like shooting yourself in the leg. Although I also agree that it is vastly the governments (and thus our) faults for Initially legitimizing the government (or maybe nixon's fault). Unfortunately government action would be too strong an attack, and so would a massive boycott. so that's why a slow public opinion change, like my opinion, that actually makes it advantageous for companies to not make their crap in China.

If apple stopped making stuff in China, I might just upgrade more often. Now multiply that times every apple fanboy/girl and it's apple no longer has to shoot it's own foot.

Companies that have had shoddy products coming out of China are companies that don't pay attention to their supply chain -- and Apple is fanatical about supply chain management.

Furthermore, the ethical problem of manufacturing in China isn't the same as that of practicing censorship in China. If tomorrow Western companies got out of China, besides unleashing an economic apocalypse that would make the last two years look like a rainy picnic, China wouldn't suddenly turn into Sweden. It would turn into Cuba, or North Korea. An angrier, more nuclear-armed North Korea. Nobody would win in this scenario, least of all the Chinese citizens we all want to eventually live in a prosperous, democratic country.

Manufacturing in China is the norm, not the exception.

If everything that was made in China would disappear from the Western hemisphere society would collapse.

And the biggest reason for outsourcing labor is for reducing the costs involved ... that's why I don't get why aren't they working on more advanced industrial robots and why is Japan the only one having breakthroughs in this regard ... probably because of unions, but what's worse ... outsourcing work or fully automated factories in your own country (that creates more jobs for engineers)? IMHO, it's the former.

And please note that with this statement I'm probably shooting myself in the foot ... since working on outsourced projects is at times my only source of income :)

I think there is a popular misconception that most companies prefer China simple because they are cheap and you can easily replace them with x country which also has cheap labor.

There are several advantage of doing business in China besides cheap (skilled) labor. They have better infrastructure than most third world country with cheap labor I can think of. I don't know much about eastern Europe and what it bring to the table besides cheap labor. But from my experience I can tell you India (or any south-east asian country) is not an alternative to the manufacturing goods produced in China.

There is some kind of international trade pact (no reference handy at the moment) that forces most western nations to divide imports of manufactured goods from third world countries. If this was not the case - I have little doubt that most western countries would have relied on China, even more than it already does. Perhaps exclusively.

That's probably true, but this is a chicken&egg problem, isn't it ... if the westerners would outsource to India / Eastern Europe ... with economic growth their infrastructure will be better and better.

And cheap labor is the primary reason ... you take that away and I don't think anything else will matter. Because of its economic growth, costs in China will rise, it's only a matter of time.

There are many other places to get goods manufactured, and the free market is extremely good at sorting out problems like this.