The China Syndrome

It doesn't take much to ratchet up the anxiety of American parents. Reactions to the ongoing revelations about tainted products from China took a seismic leap this summer when Mattel recalled millions of toys found to be contaminated with lead paint. These included brands in the top rank of children's consciousness--Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer and Barbie. As the recalls continued for contaminated toys and other defective products, the company's apologies came thick and fast, including to the government of China (and implicitly to the global business community) for having jeopardized the entire "Made in China" operation. Bob Eckert, Mattel's CEO, has had to issue unusually strenuous assurances to consumers ("Because your children are our children, too") that the safety of children is paramount to the company.

But no such assurances are likely to be offered to the workers in the firm's South China supplier factories, who routinely handle toxic materials as part of their job. Nor has the media had anything to say about their plight. For every American child who might come in contact with a contaminated toy train, thousands of teenage girls toil twelve hours a day, inhaling poisonous fumes in factories that are often firetraps, for a pittance. These workplace hazards have been well documented over the years by the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee, Asia Monitor Resources Center, China Labor Watch and the National Labor Committee. But antisweatshop activists in these organizations have been unable to prick the conscience of toy consumers as effectively as they have with garment shoppers.

That may change, and not just because of the toy scare. The problems with imports from China began last spring with deaths caused by melamine-laced pet foods retailed by Del Monte, Nestlé Purina and Menu Foods. Next to kids, pets are the most vulnerable and intimately loved of all family members, and so the anxiety hit home quickly. And the list went on: dodgy drugs, defective automobile tires, poisonous toothpaste, combustible computer batteries, toxic seafood. By the end of the summer, every product sent from China was suspect. Politically, the scandals were a godsend for China-bashers on Capitol Hill and talk-radio, where many smug lectures were offered to Beijing about how to put its regulatory house in order.

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