Anti-China-Goods rant aside, I would also contest your claim they’re coming up on the US. Growing up I was told this, and halfway believed it, but the evidence for a prosperous China just isn’t there & the evidence against them is growing every day. Despite their numerous attempts to hide negative press. While still technically a formidable foe with power based on sheer numbers & basic technologies alone, China is a struggling world power riddled with problems, like a body with cancer. Effectively making them a paper tiger.

First & foremost, know this: China’s worst enemy has, and always will be, China. The CCP rules with an iron fist, then there are unintended consequences. The one child policy (and people’s preference to have their one child be a boy) created a terrible gender imbalance & consequences we see playing out today. As of 2021 & reacting to slowing birthrates and an aging population, the CCP now allows families to have up to 3 children. More on that in a bit…

Look into the Four Evils campaign, a movement that led to famine, the starvation of an estimated 20-30M people. It’s a fascinating little read & a perfect example of going to extremes, and unintended consequences.

Some of China’s GDP & “growth”, kind of like the US, is fake. They’ve built entire cities nobody lives in, empty malls with no stores. It looks good on paper, all that construction & work being done. But how good is that work? And what’s it all for, sitting empty, rusting/rotting/crumbling away into nothing? They, too, have a real estate bubble ready to burst.

Fake accomplishments & claims abound. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. They claim nuclear fusion. They claim they can turn deserts into lush, healthy forests. They claim amazing technologies & weapons, no you can’t see them, but trust me bro our scientists have totally verified it multiple times. So legit. 🙄🙄🙄

Much like the US & UK, but on crack – they’re using all this technology to enshittify the lives of their residents. To press that boot of authoritarian rule more firmly onto their necks, controlling every aspect of their lives, cracking down on dissent, etc. Social credit scores like a Black Mirror episode (specifically S3E1, “Nosedive”, a good watch!). The crazy COVID crackdowns, which led to…

The disenchantment of the youths, millennials & Gen Z. Granted this has been festering for years before covid, but all the weird social shit around covid led to the Tang Ping movement in China, informally known as “Let It Rot”. An overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated youth slaving away for the CCP, facing an aging population to care for, has decided to just let it all rot. Juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Why try to date, why marry, why have any children at all, let alone 3? What’s the point of it all, to help the CCP? The assholes…running & ruining their lives? Nah. Let it rot. Very fascinating stuff, Google it.

So between their copy-paste or outright fake “innovations”, their fake real estate & holdings, their poisoned food, their poor, impoverished populations, their aging population, their despondent & depressed youth, etc…I don’t think things are looking so hot for China. The more you learn, the more the narrative unravels. It’s pretty sad that they have so many people & don’t dominate the world, but again, it’s mostly China’s fault. Even their own citizens resent China, with damn good reason. Ultimately, their actions (and inaction) will not allow China to succeed.

Nah it’s not about the quality, it’s about the Chinese Communist Party & some of the sketchy-ass companies they just allow to operate over there. When I was on Reddit I had a comment I could point to with some examples. But I care, deeply, about this issue & I think it’s important to not only highlight claims but bring the receipts to back it up. So please…enjoy.

Might add to this/refine later. There’s nothing racist about this, this is merely a fraction of many, many shady business scandals I can recall off the top of my head. Things that people did, and were allowed to be shipped out to the public, they do not care. I implore you to exercise caution when trying out new electronics of any kind from China (AKA virtually all electronics), and not to knowingly purchase & consume their food.

Chinese companies sold toxic drywall to the United States, which was installed in homes & offgassed fumes. If you ask me, you’ve got to be pretty stupid to buy Chinese drywall, why would you do that? To save $5? But I digress…

It is disturbingly common for Chinese footwear, especially footwear designed for babies/toddlers/children, to contain high levels of lead. This shipment contained Chinese footwear with 300 ppm lead; that is 3x the maximum lead exposure level acceptable by law. Lead exposure, poisoning is mainly through eating or breathing, however, kids put on or take off their shoes…hands go in mouth. Or hell some kids are putting their mouths on shoes. That’s lead exposure. And as everyone is quick to point out, these are small & growing bodies, not adults. So while “they’ll live”, there really is no safe level of lead exposure for children.

Moving on from freaky footwear, there’s the 2008 Chinese milk scandal. They were intentionally sneaking melamine into milk to fraudulently boost protein levels. Melamine, a plastic used in the production of whiteboards & countertops, doesn’t even mix into milk naturally. That took effort, dissolving with formaldehyde or another chemical before they could poison your milk. Drinking this milk resulted in kidney stone production, kidney failure, etc…thousands of hospitalizations & 6 dead babies. Thankfully, the CCP harshly came down on the baddies. 2 executions, three life imprisonments, two 15-year prison sentences, and the firing or forced resignation of seven local government officials and the Director of AQSIQ. The former chairwoman of China’s Sanlu dairy was sentenced to life in prison. Also, a Chinese company poisoned pets via melamine “enhanced” wheat gluten, used in wet pet food.

Nefarious fuckery aside, I just would not eat food imported from China, as there’s a good chance it is contaminated with heavy metals. More recently than that 2014 article, I’ve heard from multiple sources that Chinese garlic is fertilized with human sewage, then bleached when it’s time to sell it in the US. Now utilizing sewage as fertilizer in agriculture, as a concept…doesn’t scare me. But do I trust the standards of the people applying it? Yeah, again, hard pass. And the bleaching, probably not bad. Bleach is food safe when it dries. But do I trust them to do it, safely & effectively? No. It is ironic, I see people defending the practices when China does it, but those same practices are probably not allowed for US produce. Little hypocritical.

They poisoned our youth & poor with cheap THC vape juice carts, using Vitamin E acetate as a binder. It works well as a binder, but when introduced into the lungs, the sticky oil coats the lungs & interferes with the function of the alveoli, resulting in a fascinating condition I can only call…“dry drowning”. You’re not in the water, you breathe in the air, but your lungs can’t process the air for oxygen & you die. Having vaping friends, I specifically recall China being blamed for the practice of Vitamin E binder oils. They did it because it was cheaper to produce. Most of the people that died were poor or high school kids, trying to get product for cheap.

Moving away from food & into hard consumer goods, can’t forget about the hoverboards. Just Google “Charging hoverboard burns house down” & you’ll get a lot of stories, even a few deaths.

Anything with a battery, really, is a risk. We know this. But depending on the manufacturer, subsequent testing, and I would also argue charging methods…we can reduce the risk as much as possible, or the manufacturer can increase our risks by cutting corners to save money.

TL;DR – China Is Asshole

Hmm, can irobot not also manufacture their products in China?