Posted on 09/03/2020 6:47:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In his new book, Unbelievers, British historian Alec Ryrie observes that the only moral standard people agree on these days is “don’t be like Nazi Germany.” Since firms such as Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, and Bayer used forced labor from concentration camps during World War II, that should mean we could all agree that forced labor is bad.
Tragically, at least if it involves new laptops in time for the new school year, it doesn’t.
Recently, the Intercept reported that Lenovo, the world’s largest manufacturer of laptops, “has imported an estimated 258,000 laptops” built by a certain Chinese manufacturer named Hefei Bitland. Through this manufacturer, Lenovo “participates in a Chinese government program that provides factories with cheap labor from persecuted Uighurs.” “Cheap labor,” in this case, means “forced labor.” The Uighurs providing the labor are concentration camp inmates who cannot refuse the work assignment.
The U.S. government has singled out Hefei Bitland for violating human rights. Still, even after Hefei Bitland was placed on a government list restricting trade, some of the computers reached American consumers. Lenovo removed a portion of the laptops from distribution, but others were still shipped.
It’s tempting to rationalize using products from forced labor. According to The Associated Press, there is a significant shortage of laptops for American students this school year. Companies like HP, Dell, and, of course, Lenovo blame U.S. sanctions on Chinese suppliers for the shortfall. Some school administrators have adopted a less-rigorous approach to human rights.
One administrator described the situation as “a tough one.” “I’m not condoning child slave labor for computers,” he said, “but can we not hurt more children in the process?”
Is going without a computer for a few months the moral equivalent of child slave labor?
Of course, a shortage of laptops, especially during pandemic-caused education at home, creates serious problems. However, as the Intercept pointed out, this one of many moral pitfalls caused by China’s role in the global supply chain, given their use of forced labor. Global dependence on Chinese manufacturers creates powerful incentives to overlook China’s abysmal treatment of religious and ethnic minorities, such as the Uighurs.
One million Uighurs have been put into concentration camps, “separated from their children, prevented from exercising their religion, and subjected to political indoctrination.” Some have also been “forcibly sterilized ... [and] made to use intrusive birth control methods.” More recently, there have been reports of forced abortions and even infanticide, something members of the American press rightly decried, despite the 600,000-plus babies killed each year here in our country are considered women’s rights.
The Chinese campaign against the Uighurs meets the criteria of Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide. But, as in the 1930s and 40s, the temptation for companies and consumers to rationalize doing business with the perpetrators of genocide is proving too great to resist. The only real way to avoid global complicity in China’s atrocities is to reduce global dependence on China — just as Japan and India are doing and corporations like Apple are doing.
“Don’t be like Nazi Germany” is good advice, but it is not a firm enough foundation to ground human rights, especially when the atrocities are hidden behind accounting and business practices.
Human rights can only be safely grounded in the Christian idea of the imago dei, which teaches us that we are indeed our brother’s keeper, even if our laptop delivery is delayed.
A co-worker recently got rid of his Lenovo laptop.
It would, suddenly and without warning, just randomly shut-down and reboot in the middle of the day as he was trying to do his work.
In the Soviet Gulags the workers used to deliberately sabotage export product as a plea for help, and to deny their captors future sales.
No doubt what happened here.
I joke about owning chinese stuff made by children in prison. I hear about “slave labor” but never actually see any photos or videos that I can trust. I just see it as a rumor.
German citizens saw, with their own eyes, the treatment of Jews, the removal from their homes, the shutdown of their businesses. I’m seeing none of that regarding chinese made goods.
So much is made by robots now that there is little need for much labor, forced or otherwise, regarding electronics.
German citizens saw, with their own eyes, the treatment of Jews, the removal from their homes, the shutdown of their businesses. I’m seeing none of that regarding chinese made goods.
Lemme help you get the point across to readers that you meant this in the sense of a joke or sarcasm illustration towards those who do not know. Just trying to help there, formatting can sometimes help where text can be read ambiguously.
Nah, the reboot was just the Huawei malware phoning home.
All hail Xi JinPooh!!!
/sarc
I’m sitting here reading this article on a Lenovo computer that I bought in June, which was made in China (yeah, I just checked).
I don’t even know what to say...roughly 100 of my distant family perished in concentration camps, and now I am going to wonder for a long time if this computer was made by people in conditions that many not be terribly different from what some of my relatives went through.
This is on Lenovo and other manufacturers - they KNOW the conditions, they HAVE to know. Also, our “leaders” from years past who couldn’t run to do business with China fast enough. We really need to sanction companies and China itself until such time as they bring work standards and the treatment of people in general up to some reasonable standard of human rights.
You aren’t looking very hard or you are looking away. There is evidence and most of it is on YouTube which makes it easier to find Just da a search on China Uighur and be prepared to spend a couple of hours being schooled.
Yeah. I’m saying that I consider the “forced labor” thing to be a red herring. i.e. there may be “some” places where it happens, just like I definitely believe it happens in the US, but I need to know regarding particular products and verified stories.
I’ll do that. I pull all my news and usually that comes from glancing at headlines and then searching related topics.
At least my sneakers and LeBron James jersey are still ok right?
“In the Soviet Gulags the workers used to deliberately sabotage export product..”
Sort of like the Teachers’ Unions do and they aren’t even forced labor.
I don’t have a laptop. It doesn’t fit in my pocket.
I transcribe congressional hearings that feature both witnesses, victims, and NGOs that attest to all of this.
You do? Do you post them?
No, but you can watch them on the website of the congressional committee that ran the hearing. Some of them are on YouTube as well.
A lot of V-2s never made it to London due to faulty welds that just happened to be in the most inaccessible and difficult to inspect parts of the missile bodies...
He got it all set up, bolted to the floor, leveled, and calibrated.
He then asked to train the operator.
They brought the poor guy out and chained him to the machine!
That was the last time he ever did business with the Chinese.
There is nothing wrong with slavery depending on who is being enslaved. Progressive routinely visited the Soviet Union to praise their prison system. Basketball players with multimillion dollar shoe contracts see no problem with Uighur slaves making shoes. In 1947 Secretary of State James Byrnes remarked about the U.S. role in the slave labor business agreed to in the Yalta Agreement, “Forced labor camps are a symbol of Hitler’s regime that we should eliminate as rapidly as possible.” Those living former slaves cannot be compensated because the the statute of limitations came into effect on September 29, 1978. A vast array of products sold in the U.S. are made in China under questionable conditions. When our interests are involved we act like some school administrators who “have adopted a less-rigorous approach to human rights.” The bleeding hearts who condemn Trump for separating immigrants from their children are silent about Uighurs separated from their children.
Nice profile page. My hat’s off to you!
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