- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- humanrights@lemmy.sdf.org
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- humanrights@lemmy.sdf.org
Opinion piece by Li Qiang, founder and executive director of China Labor Watch, and a human rights advocate with over 30 years of experience investigating global supply chains.
[…]
China’s low rights model is no longer a domestic labor issue but a systemic challenge to global labor standards, supply chain governance, and fair market competition. Without a coordinated civil society response, the global baseline for worker rights will continue to fall.
I call China’s economic model a “low rights” one because it has long relied on suppressing labor costs to maintain industrial competitiveness. As a result, trade imbalances between China, the United States, and Europe are strategically linked to China’s ability to attract multinational companies through low-cost labor and policy incentives. At the same time, Chinese companies internalized the technology and management know-how of these foreign companies into their domestic systems, gradually transforming what were originally Western competitive advantages into China’s own strengths.
[…]
In recent years, China’s “low-standard, low-cost” development model has expanded beyond its borders. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, it has spread globally, exporting labor, environmental, and governance risks to host countries. Nowhere is this more evident than in Indonesia’s nickel sector, where mining and smelting contracts are so short that they function like countdown clocks, pressuring companies to recoup capital as fast as possible.
[…]
This “low-cost” model has been permitted to exist due to an increasingly shrinking civic space. Independent labor monitoring inside China has become dramatically harder in the past decade. Today, only a few independent organizations remain capable of conducting investigations, such as China Labor Watch. Yet, political risks deter most international funders from supporting work inside China, leaving independent oversight critically under-resourced in an area where it is needed most.
[…]
To counter this dynamic, civil society organizations must be central to any strategy for raising global labor standards. We can advance change in three key ways.
First, increase public awareness. We can collectively highlight that consumers must recognize the real costs behind low-priced products: long working hours, low pay, job displacement, low labor standards. The public must understand that declining labor standards ultimately harm every society. In reality, with wages stagnating in many Western countries, more consumers rely on cheaper products that are produced by workers who are, in fact, competing with them for similar types of jobs in the global labor market.
Second, advocate and partner with authorities for the rigorous enforcement of forced-labor laws. Import bans, labor regulations, and due diligence laws already exist. But enforcement depends on independent organizations holding authorities accountable, and providing evidence if there are enforcement gaps. It also requires sufficient and sustained funding to ensure that these laws can be implemented in practice, rather than remaining symbolic commitments.
[…]
The EU Forced Labor Regulation and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) had their scope narrowed during the legislative process, while U.S. forced labor import enforcement remains inconsistent and lacks clear direction, making the global regulatory landscape by significant uncertainty. If global civil society does not intervene now, global labor standards will not simply stagnate; they will be redefined downward by a model built on speed, opacity, and the suppression of rights.
[…]
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Hey, .mlers — explain why this is a good thing, again? I’m waiting.
Settler workers rights and cushy conditions are built upon exploitation, enslavement and environmental destruction, and now youre falling for this we must liberate the those poor wretches bullshit
this isnt about the environment or poor workers, this is about mineral wealth that you feel entitles to
china is not your enemy, imperialism is, china is not imperialist
Especially worrying for the imperialists is that batteries, and to some extent electric vehicles look like the type of emerging industries that imperialism has historically dominated. As transport and industry are progressively electrified, and as electricity is progressively switched over to cheaper (i.e. more labour efficient) renewable sources which require battery back-up, demand for batteries is set to grow rapidly. There is likely to be an extended period of boom with substantial profits to be made. It is the same for solar panel manufacture.
Historically, such a mammoth new market would have been the source of massive profit bonanza for those who dominate the roll out. But in 2025 it is China, not the major imperialist states that dominates the production of solar panels, batteries, and to some extent electric vehicles. This shows how threatening China has become to imperialism’s ability to reproduce itself.
The threat that Trump’s tariffs and Biden’s industrial policy seek to address is not that China is itself beginning to replace the imperialist societies and take over the role of revolutionising the means of production—i.e. itself become the monopolist. This is why China cannot itself become imperialist.
https://mronline.org/2025/06/05/is-china-finally-breaking-the-u-s-stranglehold/
sigh
we (from the global south) live in a “low rights” model way before china was the talk of the town.
and that was brought in by western imperial neoliberalism (since the 90s, in my case specifically), not china.
And the fact that you think either one of them cares about you. Or will do anything to ultimately help you shows the hypocrisy of your position.
Since the 90s eh? Must be nice. You still have your lands and your culture. My people have been fighting it since the 18th century. Only just barely in my lifetime seeing progress on winning any semblance of rights of any sort or any cultural heritage back. Don’t give either of them a foothold.
i don’t remember saying absolutely anything about who cares about who. i’m not about to both sides this because one small group of (western) countries led by the US do significantly more damage than all the others combined. i’m simply condemning the countries actually doing it.
and no, neoliberalism since the 90s is not nice considering my country has a history of being exploited dating back to the 15th century by a lot of the same empires, since you wanted to come up with oppression olympics.
it bears repeating yet again china is involved in absolutely none of it, and that easily counts for the entirety of my continent. regardless of anyone’s opinions about it or how usians and westerners try to distort it.
i don’t remember saying absolutely anything about who cares about who. i’m not about to both sides this because one small group of (western) countries led by the US do significantly more damage than all the others combined.
You’re literally here because you were brought in with low quality bait. Calling you out for your hypocrisy. Hypocritically defending China with “but the west”. And you sincerely expect anyone to believe that you aren’t doing it because they’re technically your team. It’s dishonest and insulting.
And while America has absolutely been influential and plenty bad. That you would diffend China, and even Russia with that. Countries who have massive body tolls in their own right. One being marginally worse does not justify the offenses of the other.
and no, neoliberalism since the 90s is not nice considering my country has a history of being exploited dating back to the 15th century by a lot of the same empires, since you wanted to come up with oppression olympics.
And yet, you defend those that would exploit you again. No one is making it a competition here but you. You’re literally excusing bad behavior by the CCP with X was worse. They’re both bad. Who cares who’s technically worse? Literal projection. Campist hypocrisy.
it bears repeating yet again china is involved in absolutely none of it, and that easily counts for the entirety of my continent. regardless of anyone’s opinions about it or how usians and westerners try to distort it.
No it doesn’t. They’ve killed millions of their own, attacking everyone else in the region and every non Han minority at their mercy. Any group that behaves like that isn’t an ally.
nah. what’s dishonest and insulting is coming here to to make up some kumbaya about both sides being equal, despite one of them being historically imperialist and active in what? 3 wars simultaneously right now? you are goddamn right i’ll be on the side that isn’t. you are the one with a secret side here.
and you are goddamn right this article is low quality bait, because it wildly misrepresents who is the real superpower manufacturing “weaker protections for workers”, and quite a few more evil shit around the entire globe.
your appeal to ad hominem is bad btw. you should listen to someone actually living through what you imply to understand, because your western neoliberal talking points simply don’t align with reality. tbf you clearly won’t so bye and have a nice day.
This user atracking you for being dishonest and then pullsing some the Han people are are a hivemind hoard, not my ally is pretty funny - even just the framing of the linked article is those sneaky Chinese, they’re trying to trick you, classic stuff 🙄
might as well start quoting george orwell at me
might as well stop pretending to be neutral too. these people look right wing, sound right wing, quack and are feathered like right wingers.
You act like your statement suggests I think that it was right then and wrong now.
.ml is a cesspit — you cultists are all the same.
fuck off. if you guys weren’t massive hypocrites, you wouldn’t be doing what you falsely accuse others of doing. yes someone is exporting the neoliberal exploitation model to my entire continent (hint: it is not china). and it’s not in “the past”.
hating on .ml or whatever is just your way of not coming to terms with your own imperialism.
That’s what I thought, eat shit cultists.
if you thought any of this we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
whatever helps you cope, apparently.
Llewellyn-Smith was the founding publisher of The Diplomat, an Australian international business and politics magazine, in 2000
In 2022, in response to a proposed security deal between the Solomon Islands and China, Llewellyn-Smith called for Australia to invade the islands and “engineer regime change in Honiara”.
from wikipedia, very cool
the magazine was sold to James M Pach in 2009, he works for PWC, and is involved in oil business?
https://www.marketscreener.com/insider/JAMES-M-PACH-A2BBIW/
yeh nah great source, lets all waste our time honestly engage with this
