by Gary Davis

Created on: August 06, 2009   Last Updated: August 08, 2009

I write a lot about news. Over the course of the last year there have been a number of recalls. These recalls have had to do with toys, cribs and high chairs. Inevitably they were manufactured in China.

Before we can answer what the result for China will be for failing in the area of manufacturing and getting "bad press," it is necessary to know why the manufacturing is being done there to begin with.

China has a large amount of business that is "outsourced" from the United States. The reason is that the labor in China is so much cheaper than in our country. American businesses can meet the demands of the "well-documented" economic woes we are currently experiencing.

Unfortunately the old axiom "You get what you pay for" holds true. Cheap pay brings inexperienced labor and ultimately cheap and sometimes dangerous products.

However as part of my research I find that a key aspect of China's problem is the fact that they admit at this point they cannot promise quality. They are too new and too big. They say they will try harder but cannot say these mistakes won't happen again.

The reason that this problem will not hurt China is very simple, money.

If there was a concern for the American consumer by American and other global companies to begin with, the products wouldn't have been outsourced which not only put the consumer at risk but removed jobs.

Businesses consider an occasional bad product the price for saving so much money in manufacturing. In fact cheap labor even allows a single company to compete against itself.

If they put out an inferior product under a brand name coming out of China that they sponsored, they can take the overwhelming savings and produce excellent products locally but at a much higher price and point to the "dangers" of the inferior product.

This outsourcing principle is also the cornerstone of Chinese-based products so even their own manufacturing is safe.

One last consideration:

Global consumers are becoming less demanding. It is becoming harder to get good service and good products as businesses become more global moving out of the "local business" mentality.

These days we are more at the mercy of business.

To have any impact on China the consumers in various countries would have to have some way to bring economic pressure to bear.

That is pretty hard to do considering the fact that China is now the most financially sound country in the world.

Learn more about this author, Gary Davis.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.