I agree that Asian child labor isn't a really desirable situation for the kids involved, but it seems to be a stage that cultures go through. It was common in the US and Europe all throughout the nineteenth century, and still is in many family owned businesses. Look at it this way: If those kids weren't working they'd be starving or begging on the streets. In Eastern Europe, Haiti, large parts of Africa, many children are sold by their parents or kidnapped and often used in the "sex trade". I'd rather know that they were making shoes, had food to eat, and a place to live because of the money we spend on shoes.
A few weeks ago, in India, I understood what a Catch-22 is.
There was a young girl, about 7 years old, with her brother, about 2 years old. She followed me, the western businessman, for half an hour, asking me to buy a banana for herself and her brother. It was 10am, time to be at school. If you buy her something, her parents will keep on sending her out for begging. If you don't, they have nothing to eat. When I came back to that place at 8pm, I bought her a banana, and also for about 20 more children that seemed to appear from nowhere. It cost me 10 cent or so. That happened for three days until my departure
In this world, you can go to great lengths, but you are never perfect - what would you have done?
These days, in a crisis, we have one more reason to buy local products, and that is our neighbours, our societies, our communities.
But is that right? I am not sure whether it is better to finance a
comparatively comfortable lifestyle for a GM or Opel worker or get a Hyundai and help people that have much less. In the end we all lose because globalization in the way we did it during the last ten years destroys our jobs, our environment, our political stability and helps some people abroad that are already rich.
Some things I decided for myself. I don't buy chinese counterfeit articles. In other words: no Benro tripods, Lucky films, Shen-Hao cameras... or chinese shoes. The chinese shoe factories are currently killing all the shoe industry in europe. The average wholesale price for a pair of shoes from China is about 6 dollars. Now, compare this with the recommended retail price or the street price... and imagine how much cheaper they could be if the chinese factory had not decided to equip their shoes with a second helping of carcinogenic substances...