Sunday, October 31, 2010

Not As Good As 'Made In China?'

I went to the store today. It's been a rare occurrence in the past eighteen months or so, what with being 'between assignments' and all. But I need new workout shorts, since the two pair I have are wearing out. One has a hole right in the middle of the butt crack portion, so I can't really wear them outside (though I have, sorry Mom), and the other pair - my 'good' pair - are wearing out and getting threadbare on the fronts of the thighs. It's past time for new shorts, is what I'm saying.
   I went to the sporting goods store early, after my workout so I'd be primed for the purchase. And as I was sorting through the racks, and wondering how many people played basketball for there to be so many basketball shorts choices, I started noticing where the garments were actually made.
   Vietnam, Venezuela, Mexico, Sri Lanka. Swaziland. Really. Swaziland, the little landlocked dot in the top right of South Africa. They make garments for export now. Who knew?
   After I saw the Swaziland label, I started looking through other clothes I wasn't interested in buying, trying to find a 'Made in China' label. Didn't come across a single one. Which means that China is now too middle-class to do the kind of back-breaking cheap-labor work that made them an economic powerhouse.
   Which got me to thinking. What does a middle-class Chinese shopper do when they find a 'Made in Swaziland' label on their brand-new Mao jacket? Do they turn up their noses and paw through the racks until they find a 'Made in China' label?
   I mean, it's inevitable, right? Just like Americans are on a kick to find stuff that's 'Made in the USA,' the Chinese middle class has to be doing much the same thing, only with their own jingoism in the front. And that's kind of scary if you think about it too long.
   So what happens in another twenty or thirty years? Will shoppers in Swaziland be in the sporting goods store shopping for shorts, only to be brought up short by labels that read 'Made in Micronesia?'

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