China and Free Trade

Sorry, I guess I'm on a free-trade kick this evening:

The BBC mentions the following report on Chinese labor standards published today by the campaigning alliance Playfair. I must say that one should be a little skeptical of an alleged research organization that is actually funded by a confederation of trade unions under the "fair trade" banner.

I notice that these Western organizations only find time for "awareness" when the working conditions are in factories producing Olympics merchandise. I also find it interesting that there are no voices of Chinese workers calling addressing workplace law violation: only Western campaigners speaking on their behalf. Much like how the Chinese Communist Party speaks for the workers' interests...

I am sure work in a Chinese factory is intense, with long hours, forced overtime, and perhaps even labor with children as young as 12. But as James Fallows points out in his excellent piece on Chinese industry in Shenzhen, Chinese peasants willingly leave their families and drudging agricultural toil behind to work in such jobs. They save money for a few years and then often return home in the hope of starting businesses. This is a hard life, but its the life of millions of people striving for and building a richer future through industrial revolution, just has America and the West did a century and a half ago. Fallows also mentions that Western campaigners have a tendency to misinterpret Chinese labor conditions, like when campaigners see computer assemblywomen grounded with wires to prevent static electricity buildups and think that they are chained to their stations as slave labor. Nor do these same campaigners seem to have much to say about non-export industries, like when 33 workers were incinerated at a government steel plant because of faulty equipment.

Those concerned about working conditions in China would better spend their energies supporting the Chinese themselves in building a society and legal system that better protects property and civil rights. If Chinese workers were free to organize for themselves outside of the Communist Party structure, they certainly would not need meddling foreigners deciding which of their workplaces were bad for them.