What does 'Made in China' mean?

Some people are currently making a lot of noise about the manufacture of products in China. They say this practice eliminates jobs that would otherwise go to American workers. True to a small degree, but mostly wrong.

In the last 15 to 20 years, Americans have witnessed an explosion in the availability of high quality, innovative and reasonably priced consumer products that previously were either unavailable or available only to wealthy individuals. Most were not being made at all by American workers beforehand or were made only in very small quantities at very high cost.

Of these "Made in China" products, an average of $8.80 for every $10 in retail price goes into American pockets and a mere $1.20 into Chinese pockets. That $8.80 pays American office workers, union cashiers, union truck drivers, warehouse workers, port workers, customs agents, logistical professionals and many, many more.

The fact is, if Americans were to suddenly "boycott China" as many bumper stickers tell us to do, our economy would grind to an immediate halt and our standard of living would decline dramatically. Affordable Chinese products have kept American consumers spending and our economy moving forward in spite of our questionable involvement in Iraq, abusive lending practices by American banks, corporate Enron-style greed and rapidly rising oil prices.

The Chinese are keeping us afloat as we borrow out of control to pay for military hardware and entitlement programs.

Charles Firth

Batavia