Saturday, March 20, 2010

Shades of Ol' Sam Walton.


Wal-Mart recently announced that China has to clean up it's act! They have to meet standards for energy efficiency, water conservation, reduction of non-recyclables, and they can't use or abuse child labor laws. I wonder how Walmart will enforce this? Never mind, at least it's a step in the right direction. At some point if China has to clean up it's act, and play by Americans rules, American workers may stand a chance of competing in the world work force again.

Link: Walmart tells china that there are new standards

"Wal-Mart's suppliers have been forced to get serious about pollution, Ma said. "Wal-Mart says if you're over the compliance level, you're out of business. That will send a powerful signal."

"If Wal-Mart were a sovereign nation, it would be China's fifth or sixth largest export market."
We send a lot of money to China.

"Many China experts say Wal-Mart's guidelines could be more important than the government's."


Whether this will help Wal-Mart's relations with U.S. customers isn't clear.
"Our customers care; they just don't want to pay more," one Wal-Mart executive said.

"Labor costs have risen, Wong said; a worker typically earns as much as $132 a month."

"We hope to get more customers," said Barry Friedman, vice president for corporate affairs in Beijing. "We're not doing it solely out of the goodness of our hearts."











 

5 comments:

Ernie Branscomb said...

If you like statistics, her are a ton of them on China



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Anonymous said...

I like this post Ernie. It's all the sites on statistics.
Personally, I have always been interested in China.

Oregon

Ernie Branscomb said...

Oregon
It's good that you like them. They are nice people, besides they own your shorts.

Anonymous said...

I like the country not the government. Come to think about it, I don't like my government either.

Oregon

Aunt Janet said...

I'm also very interested in China. My first marriage was to a Chinese guy from Hong Kong. I've been to HK, and Taiwan, but would very much like to travel to China, especially to the north west, where some minority peoples still live and carry on traditional culture. I can even speak a little bit of Chinese, Mandarin and Cantonese. I'd like to go on a textiles tour, or make up my own tour.