When I read sentences like this:
"We steadfastly refuse to be purveyors of cheap, plastic, mass-produced, craptastic speakers made on an assembly line in China that contribute nothing of value to the lives of our customers or the town we call home."
I'm always amazed how much subtle racism seems to be acceptable when it comes to talking about China.
This sentence contains so many hidden assumptions, e.g. "product from china == crap" and "person in our home town earning money == good, person in china earning money == bad".
Many Chinese goods traditionally have had a reputation of low quality. Maybe that reputation is outdated or perhaps it was never quite accurate (?), but either way I don't think it's reasonable to label a reference to that reputation as racist. Nor is wanting to build businesses that benefit your local community racist or particularly wrong.
Almost every object in my house has some sort of component made in China. The fact that I haven't had to replace any of them in years AND that it didn't cost an arm and a leg compared to being manufactured here in my local country should be testament to the output of that country.
It's like we're completely spoiled by how absurdly cheap and mostly reliable things that we use on a day to day basis.
To me, it's akin to the stereotypes of foreign professional athletes such as European basketball players or Russian hockey players. When we find the examples that validate it, it reinforces the stereotype. But then, we completely ignore the countless examples that counter it, both in terms of high quality performers from the foreign country as well as poorly performing examples produced from ones own country.
There's nothing that implicitly makes something made in Canada, or USA, or Germany that much better than if it were made in China.
>There's nothing that implicitly makes something made in Canada, or USA, or Germany that much better than if it were made in China.
I'd say that there is, sort of. Much of the manufacturing that remains in the USA is for industrial applications, with specific requirements for performance and reliability. We basically exported the consumer product manufacturing category, and with it went the majority of the low quality market.
It's like the legendary status of "American made tools". When my grandfather passed away, I got some of his American tools from the 40s - 70s. They're junkier than most tools you'll find at Walmart or Harbor Freight today. Why? Because he was relatively poor and bought cheap, domestic tools built for the hobbiest market.
The one exception I've read is that China isn't producing raw steel that's as high quality as US and German steel. I was looking into tubing benders awhile back and read several accounts of even high-grade Chinese steel kinking at the same wall thickness where American and German steel continued to bend smoothly.
I'm not who you asked, but I would say that yes, this is true, but it's also much better quality than similarly priced items from the US. Much better.
So it's actually true that we're flooded with cheap crap from China and that the production quality of those items is better than from elsewhere. (For the same price range.)
Many Chinese goods traditionally have had a reputation of low quality. Maybe that reputation is outdated or perhaps it was never quite accurate (?), but either way I don't think it's reasonable to label a reference to that reputation as racist.
African-Americans traditionally have had a reputation of enjoying watermelon and fried chicken. Is it "reasonable" to label casual and/or backhanded references to that reputation as racist?
Hint: Yes. Yes it is.
It would have been perfectly easy to write a story like this, decrying the modern marketplace full of cheaply made, disposable, plastic, ghost-shift junk products, counterfeits, and fly-by-night non-brand brands, without naming the most common country of origin. We all know the stuff largely comes from China; pointing it out explicitly doesn't add information, only sentiment.
Yet so many stories bring up China specifically. There's an impulse there the author(s) aren't examining in themselves. The author(s) may not have explicitly racist intent, but the result is absolutely a racist pattern.
In the 1900s, Germany was known for mass-producing cheap pieces of cr-p. In the 1960s, Japan was known for mass-producing cheap pieces of cr-p. In the 2000s, China was known for mass-producing pieces of cr-p. Do you see the pattern?
Also, what parts of these speakers are Princeton actually making themselves? When I go to their site, they have pages upon pages about "tonewoods," but the only hardware customization they offer is changing the look of the knob and grille. I'll bet dollars to donuts that every part of this that actually makes sound is made on an assembly line in somewhere in Asia, maybe even China.
There's also the idiotic presumption that only their "lovingly handcrafted" speakers could ever provide value. Consider that their speakers are priced beyond what most people would pay and are of presumptuously higher quality than what most people would even care for. It's profoundly egotistical and makes me think that they don't quite understand the space they work in.
There's nothing racist about recognizing that a lot of cheap crap products are made in China, nor about caring more about your own community than other communities.
Correct, giving preference to your own community compared to others is commonly associated with terms such as nationalism, protectionism or cronyism. Racism can and often does happen among members of the same (local) community.
Why is creating an environment where my neighbor is suffering a good thing? We've built this fragile global supply chain for things that benefit the large scale producers and distributors and deliver low value to the consumer. Amazon is the great middleman and ultimately raises costs for the market.
I was in Georgia last year at the heart of peach harvest season. The local supermarket sold Peaches shipped in from California that cost 100% more than the fresh produce sold by small purveyors and were an inferior product in every dimension.
Note that this is the very upper end of factory worker conditions in China. For the local market, this is genuinely considered good. Knowing that conditions for "cheap" stuff produced in China are as bad as those documented in the article or (a lot) worse, it is almost immoral to buy that stuff.
If you buy cheap stuff from China or almost anywhere in Asia or Africa, you are inflicting a small amount of harm on every employee that has better conditions than that, and harm on humanity as a whole.
I know. So many things are made in China which are not crap, like iPhones. Also sad is how entitled people slag poor assembly line workers in China and yet have a higher quality of life due to the money they save on inexpensive goods.
Yes this assumption has been applied to many "developing" countries no fully developed. This includes Japan, but also Korea (remember the reputation that Kia and Hyundai used to have? very similar to the reputations that Nissan, Honda, and Toyota used to have) and Taiwan.
People forgot, but post WW2 this also applied to German engineering!
Also to the Italians. Maybe there's a pattern where a country can achieve eventual prosperity by going Fascist (Germany, Italy, Japan) ending up defeated on the wrong side of a war, then reform itself into an economy that emphasizes high value-add high-quality manufacturing?
"Make America Great Again!" Maybe Trump is onto something! </jk>
US companies didn't start massively outsourcing their entire product manufacturing to Japan. Japanese companies just made didn't just make cheaper products they were often better and more reliable. Japanese manufacturing was more innovative, not just cheap.
If it were Chinese companies that were making their own products I wouldn't mind so much. I happily buy from Lenovo because I think they make good quality laptops and treat their workers better than other laptop manufacturers.
But it isn't, it's just big corporations that want cheaper labour.
In addition to all the other great responses you have received, I would add that many consumers identify with a "person in our home town earning money" since they live in a town and need to earn money. Or end up like Detroit.
Racism blinds people. So does anti-racism.
By providing a simple derogatory label one avoids the need to think and instead imposes their prejudice upon the world - ultimately doing the very thing they are decrying. Ironic. Both ignorant bullies lacking self-awareness, compassion, and empathy, but on opposite sides. If only they realized how much they have in common.
I'm always amazed how much subtle racism seems to be acceptable when it comes to talking about China.
This sentence contains so many hidden assumptions, e.g. "product from china == crap" and "person in our home town earning money == good, person in china earning money == bad".