Is China the Japan of the 1980s?
Xenophobia and 'Made in the U.S.A.'? This all sounds dangerously familiar.
A poisonous Dora the Explorer. A lead-laden SpongeBob SquarePants address book. Even Thomas the Train's friendly face turned sinister. Almost overnight, these beloved children's characters changed into nightmarish predators with tainted exteriors and ubiquitous "Made in China" labels.
This was the summer of product recalls and it seemed no one was safe - not you, your kids or your pets.
Like most Americans, Stefania Pomponi Butler couldn't ignore the unsettling news about dangerous China-made products. The Silicon Valley, Calif. mother of two did not have any of the recalled toys in her home, but she decided to toss out the kids' China-made plastic dishware and replace it with glass items made in a different country.
In April, after a China-made wheat gluten identified in pet food caused the deaths of at least a dozen U.S. pet cats and dogs, Butler tossed out a bag of frozen edamame from China.
"Yes, I have to admit we bought into the hysteria a bit," she said. "I now won't buy any foods prepared and packaged in China."
Butler isn't alone. Eighty-two percent of Americans polled by Zogby International in August said they are concerned about purchasing goods from China and over 60 percent of American consumers said they would swear off Chinese goods.
The country known as the land of the sleeping dragon has long been criticized for its political and human rights related issues, but the barrage of news about tainted products has created a more malicious kind of backlash - and the epicenter is on the internet.
Over a dozen Web sites are dedicated to boycotting not only Chinese goods, but relations with China itself, including Boycott-China.com, a bare site which hawks items like "Boycott China" license plate frames. For some Asian Pacific Americans, the growing anti-Chinese sentiment is eerily reminiscent of another era in American history involving another vilified Asian country and the blood of a man named Vincent Chin.
Remember 'Japan Bashing'?
At Madeintheusa.com, individuals and businesses can register as "patriots" and unite in their commitment to buy American-made products. Registered patriots can also leave inspirational messages on the site's "Patriot's Page" where Amelia of Sacramento, Calif. warned:
"If you don't buy American today, your kids will be speaking Mandarin tomorrow."
"Buy American cars!" Adam of Chesterfield, Mich. wrote in a message right next to Amelia's. "Just because Toyota has a few plants in the U.S. now doesn't make it 'made in USA.'"
America's negative attitude towards Japanese-made products - which spiked in the 1980s because of the floundering American automotive industry - hasn't gone out of style with shoulder pads and Aqua Net hairspray. In fact, history has showed us it's contagious.
The scapegoating of Asians inevitably occurs when America experiences economic insecurity, said Scott Kurashige, an Asian/Pacific Islanders American Studies assistant professor at the University of Michigan.
"Within the U.S. there is insecurity with rising competition coming from Europe and Asia. Because Asia appears as a racial 'other,' they are easily scapegoated for American economic woes," he said.
Kurashige, who is also a Detroit JACL board member, has lived in "Motor City" since 2001. America's automotive industry's "Big Three" - General Motors, the Ford Motor Company and DaimlerChrysler - have also been Detroit mainstays, but with increased global competition, many Americans famously blamed Japan's dominance of the automotive industry for snatching away industrial jobs and eroding the American dream.
Then, just like now, patriotic - and often xenophobic - campaigns were mounted to encourage consumers to "buy American" and seek out the "Made in the U.S.A." labels. Lawmakers symbolically smashed Japanese products and Japanese cars were vandalized in the darkness of night because of growing anti-Japanese sentiment.
In 1982, sentiment turned into murder when 27-year-old Highland Park, Mich. resident Vincent Chin was violently beaten to death with a baseball bat by two recently laid-off white autoworkers who assumed Chin was Japanese and therefore the reason for their lost jobs. The murder became emblematic of the APA struggle at that time, and the incidents leading up to it sound jarringly similar to what is happening today.
"The reports on Chinese made product recalls, outside of being unfair, reflect a history of distrust that Americans have had against Chinese as barbaric and uncivilized people who would do anything for a buck," said Lien Murakami, a 29-year-old mother of two from Oakland, Calif. The recalls have not changed her spending habits because her young children have countless other perfectly safe China-made products in their toy chest. A few product recalls shouldn't be a reflection on the entire country, Murakami argued.
Still, she's scared of where U.S. attitude is heading with China.
"In that era [1980s], we had Vincent Chin. Let us hope that history does not repeat itself," she said.
'China Free' Labels Today
The U.S. and Asia have always been partners in a violent Apache dance of attraction and repugnance. On the one hand, American consumers want what Asia has to offer - Anime, Japanese inspired horror films, electronics and of course cheaply priced goods. But consumer demand is quickly followed by repulsion.
Today, concern over Asia being a cause for the demise of the American manufacturing industry is still prevalent, said Kurashige.
A day after toy giant Mattel recalled 19 million toys that either contained lead paint or magnets that could be deadly if swallowed, Shau Zavon opened up her local Cincinnati newspaper and read disturbing letters to the editors and opinion pieces about China.
"When you read something like that ... you feel a little uneasy," said Zavon, the 1st vice chair and a co-founder of the Greater Cincinnati Chinese Chamber of Commerce. "I understand their concern, but we're all affected."
The negative publicity has been a popular subject at their chamber meetings where members say it feels like an outright attack on China. Don't get them wrong - they recognize that China needs to improve the safety and quality standards of its products, but blame shouldn't be dealt to just China, Zavon argued.
"We need to develop a global standard for product safety, not just focus on China," said Zavon, who also pointed out that products from other parts of the world also need to be scrutinized.
Murakami also noticed the hypocrisy. When products made in the U.S. are recalled there are no calls to boycott American-made products or even the products of the companies involved.
"Even if we kept the argument to products made in foreign countries, we can note that there have been issues with toys and food from Mexico as well as European countries and yet in those cases, individual companies were held responsible rather than the countries themselves," she said.
In fact, China and Hong Kong accounted for 60 percent of product recalls in the U.S. last year, according to Edward Kang, a spokesperson for the U.S. Consumer Protection Safety Commission. The percent has been on the rise in the past few years because American companies are increasingly attracted to China.
"With tremendous growth comes lack of oversight just like what happened in this country in the 19th century," said Kurashige about the American industrial revolution.
Some American businesses are taking proactive steps to inform consumers about the safety of their products. Food for Health International, an Orem, Utah-based organic vitamin company has begun placing "China Free" labels on its product as a "safety designator," said Geoffrey Power, their marketing director.
"The labeling is in part meant to alert consumers that not all products from China are safe. Seemingly everything we touch daily is labeled 'Made in China.' This statement is meant as an alert - hopefully prompting investigation about what we ingest and how safe it is," said Power. "Our product sits in a store where 'fat-free' 'gluten-free' 'carb-free' are designators - this is meant as a similar alert."
With the Christmas buying season a few months away, two U.S. senators have also launched an offensive specifically against toys manufactured in China. Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin and Amy Klobuchar have asked the Consumer Product Safety Commission to launch a "detain and test" program for toys made in China.
"A family going inside a toy store shouldn't have to play Chinese roulette to try to guess what toys are safe for their kids," Durbin said at an Aug. 27 news conference at the Bernice E. Lavin Children's Care Center at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
Who Do We Blame?
"When I heard that Elmo and Dora toys were tainted I felt more anger towards the money-grubbing American companies than the Chinese manufacturers," said Pomponi Butler. "It just really became clear that they don't have our kids' best interests at heart, they just want to make money."
Although product safety is a problem both countries need to tackle, the recent recalls would most likely not affect trade relations between the U.S. and China, said Stephen Norton, a spokesperson for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in Washington, D.C.
"Do we need to make sure toys are safe? Yes. Do we terminate trade with your fourth or fifth largest trading partner because some products are potentially unsafe? No," said Norton.
The U.S. trade deficit with China from January to June 2007 is $117.5 billion, a 15.3 percent increase from the same time last year, said Norton. People tend to blame international trade for economic issues, he added.
Norton remembers members of Congress smashing Japanese-made goods in the 1980s and books warning of a Japanese takeover. But then Japan went into a 12-year recession. Before people get terrified that China is going to take over, remember that the American economy is doing remarkably well, added Norton.
"Blaming China and blaming Asians is a form of stereotyping and racism, but it also evades the serious responsibilities we have about the meaning of work and ways to make a living in postindustrial society," said Kurashige. "We decry outsourcing to China and other countries, but at the same time we go shopping at places like Wal-Mart that are peddling to China. At what point do we stop seeing ourselves as victims?"
It's a wake up call, he added. "Stereotyping China gets us nowhere. We need to think about these decisions we make as consumers. Everyone needs to make healthy choices rather than go after the cheapest product."
Print This Article-
Email This Article