How Profits are Manufactured

Seiji Teruya, OCU

When we buy something, it is often natural to think about how we can acquire that thing more cheaply. How can we can these products at the lowest possible cost? We consider that decision as smart, common, and normal. Yet, many people have been aware of what manufacturing practices are happening behind the scenes even as we try to get hold of cheaper and cheaper products. Human rights violations are increasing. By taking a closer look at how the system works with people and manufacturing the products, it might help us all understand how we should interact and what we should really value as consumers in today’s society.

As for one of the reasons that people choose to work in that kind of condition may be related to what they are aiming to do with money they can earn in the factories. According to Leslie T. Chang, a journalist who researches Chinese factory labor and abuses in China, many workers that she interviewed mentioned that they are interested in taking education or learning more skills by spending the money they earned. Some of them work to provide those things for their families. However, for those who are originally from rural areas of China, it is very expensive to receive those opportunities, and it is hard to find jobs with safe working conditions to earn enough money. As a result, companies and government have been taking advantage of those people in ways that force them to work without securing fair conditions.

Under the guise of economic growth in China, companies, investors, and governments have been using people’s needs to work. While the cost of living in cities is becoming higher and higher, including costs for education and social welfare, the conditions of rural areas have been left behind which makes it necessary for people to earn more money. To earn more, they migrate to large city areas where they are typically abused. By creating this circulation of abuse, companies are able to obtain cheap labor that makes the owners of those companies even higher profits, and governments able to acquire more taxes and investments from overseas. Two of the major aspects of society have managed to successfully incorporate people into the permanent cycle of consumption. 

Considering the situation above, people who consume products manufactured in the unfair conditions should step up to change the overall system. Since every single business cannot function without consumers, people who purchase things have the responsibility and power to control how companies actually work. This will lead to popular control over government as well. To regain power as a consumer, we definitely have to reexamine our own values and listen to peoples’ voice from the factories of abuse.