Wage Thieves in the Private Sector

August 20, 2011

Tom Carter, the author of China: Portrait of a People, sent me a link to a forum on political and social change in China that I found interesting. The forum was published in the Boston Review.

One in particular that I agreed with was China’s Other Revolution by Edward S. Steinfeld.

Steinfeld points out that “patterns of inequity are unfortunately not unique to the Chinese experience”, and then he makes a strong point when he writes, “One need look no further than the United States and Western Europe for developmental histories replete with exploitation, abuse, violence, and environmental degradation.”

By coincidence, the same day Carter sent me the link to this forum in the Boston Review, I read Wage theft a scourge for low-income workers by John Coté, a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle.

It seems while many Americans and the Western media often criticize China for exploitation of migrants, low-skilled wage laborers, and the rural poor, the same practice is alive and well in the United States.

Coté writes, “It’s part of a national scourge known as wage theft. More than two-thirds of low-wage workers (in the United States) reported some type of pay-related law violation…”

The piece Coté wrote for SFGate was on two pages and ends with six facts.  One says, “$56.4 million is stolen every week from (low-wage) workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.”

In addition, Poverty News reports, “Low-wage workers in the United States are gripped by increasing financial insecurity as they inch along an economic tightrope made riskier by pervasive job losses and rising prices. Many struggle to pay for life’s basics—housing, food and health care—and most report having virtually no financial cushion should they stumble.”

How many Americans are considered low-wage workers?

According to the Sloan Work and Family Research Network at Boston College, “The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2008, 39.8 million people (13.2 percent of the U.S. population) lived at or below the Federal Poverty Level (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, & Smith, 2009).”


When it comes to poverty, America ranks 3rd worst among developed nations.

If two-thirds of these low-wage workers (and there may be more) in the U.S. are being cheated, that is about 26 million people that are not being paid what they earned.

It seems to me that the American media, the nation’s leaders and most Americans should focus on solving these types of problems in the U.S. before criticizing other countries.

Discover more from The India, China battle to eliminate poverty and illiteracy

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

6 Comments | America, business, capitalism, China, Chinese middle class, Chinese minorities, economy, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Building China too Fast and the Struggle to Slow Down

August 18, 2011

Andrew Thomas of Aljazeera English reported from Chuzhou, China July 13, 2011.  He tells us about real estate agents in Beijing canvassing the traffic during rush hour, which happens to be most hours in China’s capital.

In the U.S., we might see homeless people going car to car offering to clean windows for a dollar but in China, the odds are those people going car to car will be real estate agents handing out flyers urging people to buy homes.

During most of the day, one can get around Beijing faster on foot or using the subways than driving a car or taking a taxi, which usually results in sitting dead in traffic breathing fumes from other cars.

Thomas reports that the real-estate agents will do just about anything to sell apartments hitting the market. The reason is that the Chinese are building more new apartments than any country on earth.

In Chuzhou, three hours from Shanghai, Thomas takes us on a tour of what he calls an “unremarkable town” and says this level of housing development is happening all over China.

Thomas says, between 2009 and 2010, there was a 41% rise in housing construction as prices soared. He then questions if Chinese speculators are driving this housing bubble.

In addition, he says China’s electricity authority, last year, reported that over 65 million homes use no power because they are standing empty as prices keep going up.

Thomas says China’s government is worried and wants to avoid a real estate bubble bursting so they have raised interest rates and increased the minimum down payment people must pay for second homes.

Stephen Joske of the Economist Intelligence Unit says, “We are not looking at a bubble burst resembling anything like what’s happened in the U.S.—probably a short correction.”

Therefore, for economists in the West that keep predicting China’s housing bubble will burst and slow China’s growth, think again.

As for aspiring home buyers, many in China are waiting to see what happens and are hoping prices go down. Thomas says a price drop could hurt many overseas markets that depend on China’s growth and development.

If a real estate bubble bursts in China, the odds are that the shock waves will be felt worse outside China in countries still recovering from the 2008 global financial crises caused by the private banking and financial sector in the United States, and Thomas explains why that may happen.

The reason for this speculation may be the central government’s plans to move a few hundred million more rural Chinese into newly built urban cities and new homes in older cities as China transitions from an economy dependent on exports to one driven by middle class consumption.

These property speculators are betting on the future.

Discover more from The “What if” Housing Bubble in China

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Punishing Food Fraud in China – Part 2/2

August 15, 2011

If you read Part 1 of this two part series, you may be thinking it isn’t safe to eat in China.

However, Wall Street Journal.com says, “Struggles with food safety are not a specifically Chinese problem. Many countries, including the U.S. and Japan, have gone through similar growing pains in the food industry, says Wu Ming, a professor at Beijing University’s school of public health.”

Professor Ming is correct. Down to Earth.org reports, “Every day in the US about 200,000 people become sick, 900 are hospitalized and 14 die (that’s more than 5,000 annually) due to food borne illnesses (and few if any are punished for these deaths). According to the Center for Disease Control, about one quarter of the American population suffers from food poisoning each year.”


New U.S. Laws for food safety cover all food except meat, poultry and some egg products and there are other exceptions too.

If you believe China is not doing anything about food safety, think again. I Googled total arrests in China over food safety and the result was more than 1.5 million hits.  The first one mentioned 191 officials (in 2010 — meaning government employees) that were punished for failing to do their duty in food safety,” and some were sent to prison.

The second hit mentioned 774 (in 2007) arrested in China over food safety.

In addition, Sustainable Business Forum.com says, “Unlike the U.S., China arrests Food Safety Violators.”

Helena Bottemiller of Food Safety News.com recently reported, “Current statutes (in the U.S.) do not provide sufficient criminal sanctions for those who knowingly violate our food safety laws,” said Leahy, who has become an outspoken advocate of food safety reform. “Knowingly distributing adulterated food is merely a misdemeanor right now, and the Sentencing Commission has found that it generally does not result in jail time.”

In conclusion, if you are in the food industry in China and want to take short cuts regarding food safety to boost profits while possibly killing people along the way, the U.S. is a safer place to commit murder. In China, you might go to jail or even be executed.

What does that say about America?

Return to or start with Punishing Food Fraud in China – Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

2 Comments | America, business, capitalism, China, Chinese food, crime, economy, environment, food, government, health care, legal system, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Punishing Food Fraud in China – Part 1/2

August 14, 2011

This is how capitalism works. Wall Street Journal.com reports, “Ink, dye, bleach and toxic chemicals … have been found recently in food products in China, reigniting fears over food safety despite repeated government pledges to crack down on tainted eats.”

Sounds bad, but do not judge the Chinese before reading this entire two part series to find out that China is not alone in the struggle to make food safer to eat.

It isn’t as if China’s government is not trying to improve food safety. Al-Jazeera’s Melissa Chang reports from Beijing about China’s government vowing to improve food safety laws. In fact, according to Melissa Chang, more than 2,000 people across the country have been arrested for failing to meet food safety standards.

The Wall Street Journal says, “One of the biggest issues is the drive to make a buck at any cost, says Lester Ross, a Beijing-based attorney with U.S. law firm WilmerHale. Some companies see that by using additives, they can cut overhead costs or boost profit margins, and they merely aren’t thinking about the affects the additives will have on consumers, Mr. Ross says.”

Melissa Chang demonstrates how a chemical sauce to turn meats such as pork into beef can change any meat that isn’t beef into beef so the enterprising capitalist can charge more and increase profits.

Since living in China means awareness of such trickery, “Many Chinese,” Chang says, “pay a premium to know exactly where the food they eat comes from.”

Chang then talks about an organic food cooperative in the suburbs of Beijing, which was established by families to buy directly from organic farmers and the project has proven to be very successful.

However, Chang says, “Even the best intentions (may) go awry.” Organic in China doesn’t mean the food would qualify as organic outside China since so much of the air and water is polluted there.  It is a challenge to grow quality produce.

“Achieving better standards will take years,” Chang says.

However, what about food safety in the U.S.?

Continued on August 15, 2011 in Punishing Food Fraud in China – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

Leave a Comment » | America, business, capitalism, China, Chinese food, crime, environment, food, government, health care, legal system, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Expressway Dilemma and the Solution – Part 2/2

August 10, 2011

One element of China’s plan is to not become addicted to foreign oil as the U.S. already has and one-step toward achieving this goal led China to become a partner with Shai Agassi and Better Place — something Washington D.C. has not done.

Time and Foreign Policy magazines recently named Shai Agassi as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.  The reason is that Agassi, an entrepreneur from California, launched a company called Better Place.

Deutsche Bank analysts may have already concluded that the Better Place’s approach to end global “oil” addiction could be a “paradigm shift” that causes “massive disruption” to the auto industry, and has “the potential to eliminate the gasoline engine altogether”.

To achieve a world free of a dependency on oil, Better Place has already partnered with California, Hawaii and Canada, while globally, Better Place is working with Australia, China, Denmark, Israel, Japan and the European Union.

On June 18, 2011, Better Place unveiled Europe’s first battery switching station in Denmark, and you may have noticed that China, as one of Better Place’s partners, is positioning itself to save China from the same fate that has already happened to politically gridlocked Washington D.C.

The station in Denmark, which show cased the company’s battery switching technology, is the first of 20 battery switching stations to be deployed across Denmark over the next nine months.

In the next few years, if successful, Better Place may lower the cost of driving significantly and break big oil’s monopoly on the economies of the world while lowering the cost of cars worldwide by providing an affordable, convenient and sustainable system through a revolutionary switchable battery model.

This means that instead of filling up with gas when the tank is empty, a driver pulls into a Better Place switching station and swaps battery packs in less time than it takes to wait in line and fill a tank with gasoline or diesel.

Return to or start with China’s Expressway Dilemma and the Solution – Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

7 Comments | America, business, capitalism, China, Chinese middle class, economy, environment, government, politics, science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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