By the way, I did not mean to derail the thread. I just happen to think that the answer to the original question is somewhat complicated.
My summary would be along the lines:
Why? Because of capitalism and neoliberal policies.
How to fix it? At least I am quite sure that consumerism alone will not work.
In another place, regarding the coronavirus closure of an hotel in Cornwall, I said:
Well, it’s interesting that the hotel is owned by Shearing Holidays, which is owned by Specialist Leisure Group (SLG), which is owned by American Private Equity Group Lone Star Funds. Thus the money rises… Isn’t Capital wonderful !
And they own the hotel along the road, and 2 other hotels in Cornwall…
Come back Basil Fawlty…
The thing about modern Capital is that they concentrate on buying other companies until the Iron Law of Monopoly is fulfilled, and so cut competition and make profits vanish upwards, rather than wanting to encourage local skills. To them, the people of the West are just there to buy stuff.
Old Trump may have done little for his rust-belt voters, but his opposition just wanted, and wants, to ‘retrain’ them for non-jobs and denigrate their annoying beings. Neoliberalism Kills. Only the few have any importance to modern political parties.
Choices offered are mostly illusory thanks to companies holding companies:
If you buy from Fruit of the Loom money rises to Warren Buffet.
If you buy from The Gap money rises to George Soros.
Apart from which neither old fellow is hurting for money, and each should be at his prayers.
“What ought to happen,” said the Biscuit, “is this. If I had the management of this country, there would be public examinations held twice a year, at which these old crumbs with their hoarded wealth would be brought up and subjected to a very severe inquisition. ‘You !’ the Examiner would say, looking pretty sharply at Frisby. ‘How much have you got ? Indeed ? Really ? As much as that, eh ? Well, kindly inform this court what you do with it.’ The wretched man, who seems to feel his position acutely, snuffles a bit. ‘Come on, now !’ says the Examiner, rapping the table. ‘No subterfuge. No evasion. How do you employ this very decent slice of the needful ?’ ‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ mumbles old Frisby, trying to avoid his eye, ‘ I shove it away behind a brick and go out and get some more.’ ‘Is that so ?’ says the Examiner. ‘Well, upon my Sam ! I never heard anything so disgraceful in my living puff. It’s a crying outrage. A bally scandal. Take ten million away from this miserable louse and hand it over to excellent old Biskerton, who will make a proper use of it. And then go and ask Berry Conway how much he wants.’ We’d get somewhere then.”
P. G. Wodehouse : Big Money
China has massive working force and machines to produce a product at a lower unit cost. People tend to reject Chinese products thinking those are low quality…But, it’s a myth…Branded Chinese products are high-end and quality products…
Try to find something that is NOT made in China. There is simly hardly any industry for electronic devices left elsewhere. And even thombstones and garlic are often from China.
Dear everyone,
It is so good to see a lively debate on these questions. Finding answers to them will determine if humanity will get past the global warming and biodiversity crisis (and not just the rich and powerful few).
However, I have to set a few facts right.
The GIGASET company (formely part of SIEMENS) manufactures smartphones in Germany. Do some components come from China ? And if so, how much of the smartphone in weight ratio and value ratio comes from China ? I haven’t investigated that yet, but I will.
There is probably incredibly good quality and socially responsible products from PRC. But, for now, it is too much efforts to find these good PRC products. And, most of them wouldn’t be environmentally responsible anyway because they have to be shipped from halfway around the world.
For now, I have successfully avoided PRC products for most of my goods (and believe me, it is even harder in Switzerland than in the EU). But in terms of quality in the future, who knows ? It could change like it did with japanese products. Most young people don’t remember it because they weren’t born yet. At first, after the second world war, japanese products were considered by western countries (sometimes rightfully, sometimes not) as cheap, illegal, bad quality copies of western products. Now, almost everything coming from Japan is considered top quality. However, what is not going to change is that PRC products (or asian products in general) have to be shipped from the other side of the planet. That’s not a good thing for the environment.
True now.
Wrong if you change the system: strengthen environmental and social legal standards (as a result making a larger range of current legal but unethical products illegal), give more budget, power and independence to state agencies who enforce these standards, put additional taxes on legal but less ethical products, lower or remove any taxes on 100% environmentally and socially responsible products, give massive grants to companies that specialize in lowering production costs of fair products, etc.
But to do that, it means going against powerful and dangerous lobbies that don’t even understand the huge long-term cost to their own corporations if they keep defending this old, “short-term”, polluting and waste-producing economy. That’s because they don’t understand a basic concept : the earth ecosystem is the same as a machine or a tool in their factory. If you use it well, maintain and repair it, it will keep producing goods for a very long time. If you start taking parts from it to produce goods, eventually, your machine or tool will cease to work and your factory won’t produce anything anymore. Some of the mid-management understand that with machines and tools, very few of the upper-management do. Finally, very rare and few of them seem to understand that the same rules apply to the Earth ecosystem.
Best regards,
Swiss-fairphone
I listed some German press reviews here:
One says:
“Der Hersteller rühmt sich damit, der einzige zu sein, der wieder in Deutschland Smartphones produziert - allerdings mit einer entscheidenden Einschränkung: die Teile des Gerätes stammen allesamt nicht aus Deutschland, sondern werden angeliefert. … Die eigentliche Produktion beschränkt sich aber auf die Montage der vorgefertigten Teile.”
My translation:
“The manufacturer prides himself to be the only one, producing smartphones in Germany again - though with a crucial constraint: all the parts of the device are not from Germany but get delivered. … The actual production is limited to assembling the prefabricated parts.”
Dear BertG,
Thanks a lot for the additional information. One less thing I need to search.
Best regards,
Swiss-fairphone
That got me interested again.
Here’s the actual “Gigaset” homepage on “Made in Germany”:
It’s not just smartphones, but cordless DECT-phones and smart home systems as well.
And they seem to adress quite a few topics, that Fairphone tackles. Repairability (even for old devices); longevity, fair working conditions, eco-friendly packaging …
But they e.g. do not use fair materials for the phone.
Dear BertG,
Yes, they make all sorts of phone related products.
They even make old-school robust, RJ11 line-powered, analog phones with cords.
Best regards,
Swiss-fairphone
I’d like to return to the original question of Fairphone producing in China rather than address products from China in general.
Fairphone is much more transparent about their workers’ condition than many other companies. Not only are they offering a living wage for their workers, I believe I read somewhere they’re trying to get other companies using the same factory to so the same (you can correct me if I remember this incorrectly). It seems from Fairphone’s information, by buying a Fairphone you are, in fact, positively influencing the workers’ conditions.
And this is my dilemma with buying any product: should you boycott products produced in countries where generally, conditions are bad, thus alleviating yourself of your guilty conscience, or should you still buy some of these products so as not to deprive these exploited workers of their jobs and incomes altogether? I don’t have a clear answer to this question, especially when it comes to buying clothing. It’s a nightmare because the fashion industry is so unclear about the manufacturing process, and although cheap products seem a clear give-away something fishy is going on, more expensive product can well be produced under similar circumstances.
So back to Fairphone. Couldn’t you argue that by making use of existing factories they are both alleviating the conscious consumer’s guilt while at the same time not abandoning people who depend on these jobs, but rather positively impacting their lives and actually making a change where it counts most? Yes, producing in Europe would create jobs if it were possible, but isn’t the impact of offering living-wage jobs in China much bigger? And when considering environmental impact, shouldn’t we also consider the impact of building/creating a new factory in Europe?
The only point that then remains is the shipping. That definitely is a problem, although I suppose all the different materials are already sourced all over the world, so I’m not sure you can produce local electronics as you’d grow local vegetables… Doesn’t mean it’s not worth investigating.
If you search the Fairphone homepage, you will find reports on that already; to a certain extent at least.
They tackled this by transporting the phones by train instead of using air-freight.
EDIT:
Here are the links:
Blog: How sustainable is the Fairphone 3?
PDF Report: Life Cycle Assessment of the Fairphone 3 (by Fraunhofer Institute)
Another aspect seems to be relevant, that is rarely mentioned.
It’s quantity.
Even if smartphones could be produced in Europe and Fairphone could go that way.
This would rather be no model, that other, bigger manufacturers of smartphones and other electronic devices (let alone textile production) could follow. There are not enough workers on the market, let alone skilled workers, to do this. E.g. the Golem article on the Gigaset factory in Bocholt mentioned, that one production line has 8 working people and I am not completely sure, if the possible weekly output of 6,000 phones is in reference to this one active production line or the possible 6 production lines, that can active in total. However; 6,000 phones a week is not exactly a lot with regard to the worldwide production.
To say that Europe does not have the skills or facilities to build and manufacture tech products is absolutely risible and a contemptible attempt to misdirect/misinform… Must I remind you that Nokia has a European phone factory? Perhaps it should be pointed out to you, that UK based computer designer and manufacturer Raspberry Pi, didn’t think that Europe had an inability to manufacture digital technology… they opened a factory in Britain and did just that.
It is bad enough that Fairphone builds it product in one of the most unfree and despotic nations in the world, but to try and claim that it is because it can’t be done in Europe, is outrageous, contemptible, deceitful, and utterly false.
There is one reason, and one reason only that Fairphone manufacture in China instead of Europe, and that is profit.
I refuse to buy a product that extols European based fairness as its primary selling point, whilst simultaneously setting up its manufacturing plant in one of the most exploitative, despotic and environmentally damaging nations in the world, just for a bit of extra profit.
It is nothing short of disgusting, and Fairphone should be shamed and named for it, and customers should steer clear of it and boycott them until they change this nonsense, and bring manufacturing home to Europe.
The environmental cost alone of building a product on the other side of the world (in one of the world’s biggest polluting states) and then shipping it halfway around the world, is disgusting… And for what? A few extra bucks on the bottom line on the backs of cheap labour? That doesn’t seem “fair” to me!
Thanks, but no thanks; I refuse to buy into the deception, and will boycott Fairphone until they grow the f*** up, and I urge others to do the same.
At least Fairphone pays relatively well, see Paying living wage
(Among other things mentioned earlier.)
@ Nils_Ajax_Nilsson Let me start off by emphasising that I commend your ideals. That being said, I’m also convinced it’s not that simple in practice. Let me reiterate a point I made (quite) a few posts up.
I’m convinced that if you build an assembly line anywhere in Europe, and then put out job adverts, you’ll be hard-pressed to actually fill those positions. Yes, the skills can be taught and trained here as well as anywhere else and in the interest of self-sufficiency this may be a desirable thing to do, but people will only choose to pick up those skills if 1) we shift the current culture away from the idea that everyone needs a university degree to be successful, towards a society that places value on craftmanship and skilled “manual” labour, and 2) we offer a liveable wage for all those jobs that we (so wrongly) label “unskilled”. Fairphone can set the standard for 2) and factor in the cost of labour for the product, but they’ll still have trouble finding the people to do that work unless people find the means and willingness to educate themselves in those skills.
As for this point: fact of the matter is that most components inside a smartphone (panels, SoCs, ICs, PCBs, antennas, batteries) are also produced in Asia. Today there is a choice between shipping all these individual components to Europe and assemble there, or assemble in Asia and ship finished products. Out of the two, I’m pretty sure the latter will have a lower environmental impact.
Or you can suggest that we need to also produce all these individual components in Europe. I admire that idea, but before you know it you’re setting up a complete supply chain in Europe for every item from raw materials to finished phone, involving the business of what currently are hundreds of companies. Ignoring the up-front investment required, imagine how near-impossible it’d be to stamp out and hire sufficient staff for a hundred microelectronics-producing companies if we’d already struggle to staff a handful right now. And all of those companies will somehow need to achieve a scale large enough to be remotely competitive on price, meaning they need to find many customers beyond just Fairphone. This endeavour would definitely be beyond the capacity of a small company like Fairphone.
Again, I don’t think your ideals are wrong at all, but I hope you can recognise that this requires a much more long-term strategy for Europe than can be expected from a single company like Fairphone. I hope that you’ll find the way to recognise them for the steps they are making, rather than condemn them for finding a workable compromise.
I was considering buying a Fairphone. But currently, I don’t do that because:
I can fully agreee with that, but whats the alternative? Not to use any electronics at all?
The volla phone is made (assembled) in germany.
It comes with Android without google or ubuntu touch.
It was stated somewhere in this discussion already, that assembling parts in Europe, which are manufatured in China is most probably worse than assembling the same parts there and shipping the whole thing. And it doesn’t make you independent of chinese products.
If you are referring to my reply, then yes, environmentally it probably is. In other ways it is a good idea to do the assembly more locally:
As with many things in life, it’s a trade-off…