China and the UNSPEAKABLE!

I am VERY, VERY old, by the way.  I grew up in an era when it was prohibited for American citizens to buy anything made in "COMMUNIST China" (and that WAS how it was addressed to us).  This was LONG before Nixon's trip to China or the ping-ping table relays between the two countries that supposedly "opened the door".  Of course, NOW here in 2011 China has a vastly different relationship to the West as it did in the days of the little "red books" of Mao Tse Tung!
My family and I are reluctant to buy things "made in China" because of two factors: 1) such manufacturing jobs put many Americans and Canadians out of a job.  2) we are not at all pleased at how China treats the Tibetan minorities (and they cover this up in MANY ways!). 

Our child needed a "flash drive" for school.  We searched and searched and searched to find one NOT made in China.  At last we found one Made in Mexico.....but it was many more $$$ than the ones made in China; we bought it anyway.

We have a dear Tibetan friend who is a monk and goes back to Dharmasala (God bless India for helping the Tibetans establish this place in exile!) once a year and speaks to Dalai Lama.  We see and hear things about the Tibetan PEOPLE in China and things in Tibet are indeed sad.  In the 1950's China INVADED Tibet, claiming to "protect them from foreign intervention" (the only "foreigners" intervening were the Chinese!).  Thousands of monks and nuns were slaughtered, as were many temples and monasteries.  We all clamored when the Taliban destroyed the Bamayan Buddhist statues in Afghanistan....but we said NOTHING when the Chinese destroyed thousands of religious places and religious people in Tibet.  We are hearing that many present-day Tibetans in Tibet have become drug addicts and China is just looking the other way because drugs is a means by which to CONTROL a people.  We are SO, SO saddened to see/hear what goes on there.

I am NOT (thank God) a Chinese journalist, or I would be subjected to "house arrest" for even speaking this much.  It is not only the Tibetans who are mistreated, but many other "minorities" within China who are not Chinese (Han) descent.

The NEW China is not one I know at all.  Many questions were raised as to WHO (which country) is buying the baby seal fur coats from the poor baby seals clubbed in Canada.  USA has totally banned such furs, as have many countries in Europe.  But CHINA - buys a LOT of baby seal fur coats from Canada....mostly going to the "mistresses" of factory owners.

I have no desire to visit China (just as I have no desire to visit Pakistan - with its "infanticide" problem - murdering by hanging, stabbing, burning 9 out of 10 baby FULL-GROWN babies because they are female or illegitimate).  Poor little corpses are turning up in all Karachi dumps.

AND by the way - China is ridding itself of all it's GIRLS to overseas adoption.  Good luck!!  Now they have all these BOYS who are overfed and raised (many succomb to diabetes) like "little princes" - and already they have a problem....there aren't any girls to marry, so they have to "order away" from other places.

So we try not to buy anything made in China for various reasons.  We do buy things made in Mexico, Nepal, Bangladesh and India because these countries still have cottage industries.