A Most-Anticipated Book of the Year: Newsweek * Refinery29 “Timely and urgent . . . Pang is a dogged investigator.” –The New York Times “Moving and powerful.” –Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Discover the truth behind the discounts. In 2012, an Oregon mother named Julie Keith opened up a package of Halloween decorations. The cheap foam headstones had been five … a package of Halloween decorations. The cheap foam headstones had been five dollars at Kmart, too good a deal to pass up. But when she opened the box, something shocking fell out: an SOS letter, handwritten in broken English.
The note’s author, Sun Yi, was a mild-mannered Chinese engineer turned political prisoner, forced into grueling labor as punishment for campaigning for the freedom to join a forbidden meditation movement. He was imprisoned alongside petty criminals, civil rights activists, and tens of thousands of others the Chinese government had decided to “reeducate,” carving foam gravestones and stitching clothing for more than fifteen hours a day.
In Made in China, investigative journalist Amelia Pang pulls back the curtain on Sun’s story and the stories of others like him, including the persecuted Uyghur minority group, whose abuse and exploitation is rapidly gathering steam. What she reveals is a closely guarded network of laogai–forced labor camps–that power the rapid pace of American consumerism. Through extensive interviews and firsthand reportage, Pang shows us the true cost of America’s cheap goods and shares what is ultimately a call to action–urging us to ask more questions and demand more answers from the companies we patronize.
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How much is a life worth? Facts are in this book, not myths. Read this and see what effect it has on your shopping.
It’s only February, and I can confidently state I just read the most important book of 2021. Perhaps of my life.
In a word, Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America’s Cheap Goods is terrifying. There are no words I could write to adequately express the pain I feel knowing I’ve indirectly supported the horrible practice of prison labor in China. We all have.
Forced labor camps produce the cheap products we buy. Even if they’re “Made in America”, chances are pieces/parts to assemble the products were made by unpaid, abused, tortured, force-fed and raped workers in factories in China. This book offers exposure of the nightmarish atrocities, but not many answers on how to stop it. It seems it’s up to all of us not to look away, and to stand up to face the hideous truth behind our ability to save a buck.
In addition, there is also the horror of China’s billion dollar (plus) organ transplant industry, which regularly tests these forced workers to see if matches can be found for involuntary harvest. If you thought it was disturbing to see Katniss volunteer for Prim, you’ll never sleep again when you read about how these forced labor prisoners are volunteered with their lives so someone can make a yuan off their organs. This is reality for millions in China, though as Americans we’re shielded from most of the details because, well, the Chinese government and its corporations are not giving up their “success” secrets without a fight.
I’m not saying this is an easy read, but it’s definitely an important one. Awareness is the first step to solving the crime of forced labor. We all need that knowledge to nudge us to step up and do our part.
Thank you to NetGalley, Workman Audio, and especially author Amelia Pang for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. You have changed my outlook for the better, and I am indebted to you for this eye-opening experience.
Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America’s Cheap Goods by Amelia Pang is very highly recommended exposition on China’s labor/reeducation camps, human rights violations, and how our consumerism is a tacit approval of the system.
Everyone should read this book. Everyone. And then reexamine their own involvement with cheap Chinese merchandise. Take note that if you buy something made in China it was likely made with slave labor. That should cause you to take pause in and of itself, but it becomes even more crucial to take action if you combine it with the fact that China is the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, and their rates are vastly under reported.
When Julie Keith opened up a package of cheap decorations in 2012, she discovered a plea for help written by the prisoner who made the items. The note was written by Sun Yi who was taken prisoner and put in a reeducation camp/ forced labor camp by the Chinese Communist Party. His crime was practicing Falun Gong with a religious meditation group.
Pang shares the life of Sun Yi, including the horrendous torture he and others endure in the “laogai system” which is the world’s largest forced-labor system. The system is rarely labeled as prisons, rather they call the camps reeducation centers or detoxification centers. No matter the name, they are still forced labor centers where people are sent at the whim of the CCP. The people in forced labor include the Falun Gong practitioners, as well as Christians, Turks, Muslim Uighurs, and Tibetans. Companies who get their products that are made with the forced slave labor from China never receive them directly from the prisons, instead they are exported and purchased through an import-export company system. It also appears that China is now in the business of organ selling. They get the medical information from the prisoners and will harvest their organs. The transplant industry in China is a billion dollar industry.
With modern AI surveillance technologies, the CCP is targeting even more people as they can identify them. Think about this information as you blindly follow any social media platform: “As early on as 2004, China has built the most extensive surveillance and internet censorship system in the world, with currently an estimated one hundred thousand human censors inspecting the web for politically sensitive content and manually deleting posts on various Chinese social media platforms. They are employed not only by state propaganda departments, but also by Chinese companies that have privatized censorship. And then there are the commenters, who are paid to guide online discussions in a pro-government direction. A 2017 Harvard study estimated that 448 million paid comments appear on Chinese social media every year.” China is said to be one big modern, technologically savvy labor camp.
This is not an easy book to read but it is vital that people know what is going on in China. If people show any dissent in China, this is how they handle it – imprison them into forced labor. Pang immersed herself into Sun’s story and that of other labor camp survivors over three years. Note that according to a 2017 study by the Economic Policy Institute, “China’s accession to the WTO caused the United States to lose 3.4 million jobs. And as manufacturing migrated to China, it created more opportunities for Chinese factories to outsource work to labor camps.” What we can do is limit how we spend our money and investigate the companies we buy from because China does respond to financial push back.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2021/01/made-in-china.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3769523189