I once had a toy that said "Made in the USA". I thought 'thats funny'. I then looked on the bottom of the toy where it said again "Made in the USA", however this time it had two extra words in brackets: "(Puerto Rico)".

I laughed my ass off for a while there.

Watch the cholesterol!

There are two kind of things that are made in China: 1) off-shored products and 2) original Chinese products.

As far as I know I think most of the known components you have listed are foreign products, even if from neighbor SKorea, their factories are to Chinese factories as an embassy is to national Chinese territory, except for most of the staff, which is recruited locally.

There are plenty of Chinese crap (non-off-shored products) to be found, from TVs to shoes to toys. Worse than those are the Chinese pirated trash, from purses to lethal toothpastes.

Skybird pointed out the trend though: improve the pirated goods untill they are sufficiently good to compete with the real things thanks to the cheaper prices.

I think we are forgetting about the people who make these cheap goods. Obviously some goods will be of higher quality...but there are some which are made cheap for quick profit. Made by children and other people who are forced to work long hours for little money. China needs to get its act together and actually start to think about more than the size of its bank balance and economic growth.

GP gave me a clean bill of health the other month. I'm not worried. :smug:

I Agree with what you have said. I was simply making the point that China can and do make world class quality goods which is more of a worry than the junk that they spew out through cheap almost slave labour.

You can say that again!
 

Today's cheap labor is the equivalent of the 1880's slaves. People will always try to exploit other people and the Chinese are going a good job of exploiting their people. Trouble is those Chinese people don't know any better and this is the best they have ever had it. So they think they are in 7th Heaven when they get to work for peanuts and work 20 hours a day 7 days a week for just a few bucks. Sad but true.

What concerns me more is that all the money we spend and send to China is being used by the Chinese Government to build more nuclear weapons and submarines. China's emerging out of the 16th Century into the 21st century in a big way and with their 1.7 billion people they will consume a lot more resources than I would like to see them use.

For what they use we can't. If you get my drift. They are one of the reasons why Oil Prices are so high these days. Not that we don't use our fair of the worlds resources. Hehe. But hey I would not want it any other way.

We need to maintain our military power over the world if we want to retain our current lifestyles here in the US. Right now my lifestyle is threatened by high oil prices, illegal Mexicans and the Chinese trade deficit.

You forget to mention the Dog Food with the dangerous Chemical Additives that was made in China. And then there is the toothpaste that also has some potentially dangerous chemicals in it. And then the toys that are painted with paint that contains LEAD. Lead is a neurotoxin that can cripple young children. It's like most heavy metals that can concentrate inside our bodies and damage the nervous system to the point of failure.

China has not EPA or OSHA and they subject those poor farm workers to torturous conditions. Only one in 3700 Chinese have access to an automobile right now. But that number is growing every day you buy stuff from the Chinese. We owe too much Money to China the way it is with the trade imbalance between the USA and China.

If they would pay their workers more money and treat them with better working conditions they would not be able to dump cheap products on the USA. Sure we would pay more for goods but at least they would be safer to consume.

China has no FDA or any other government office that inspects their products for consumer safety. We can buy stuff from China but we can't buy our pharmaceuticals from Canada? That doesn't make sense unless you realize how powerful the drug companies are here in the USA. They can charge what they fell like for their legal drugs and prevent any competition at the same time.