The conspiracy theory is uncharted territory for me, but with the whole Mattel recall thing just stinking to the high heavens of, at the very least, a corporate cover-up, I thought I'd throw my two-cents in.
Recalls of and advisories on products made in China are all the rage these days: from the announcement in local media that White Rabbit candies (a favorite of mine from childhood) contain formaldehyde to globe-spanning news of massive recalls made by one of the world's biggest toy companies, Mattel, of millions of its products, China and its manufacturing industry are currently among the media's favorite whipping boys. Their shoddy manufacturing processes made the cover of Time magazine, no less.
Now, the more seasoned conspiracy theorists (and I've done a wee bit of surfing to check them out) are quick to nail Mattel to the wall for their whole recall snafu, citing corporate incompetency and corruption, among other things. They ask perfectly legitimate questions like: whose idea was it to subcontract anyway? What happened to all of their quality control?
These are all legitimate questions, to which I would like to add a couple of my own:
To start off, why does the slant in most of the news reports I've read lay the blame on the doorstep of the Chinese subcontractors?
Why, after soooooo many years of having several of their product lines manufactured in China (somewhere between the last two decades, at least) has not only Mattel, but at least one other prominent American toy manufactuer (Hasbro), found enough defects in their products to justify the recall of millions upon millions of items?
Product recall is hardly a new phenomenon, but in a day and age where quality control should be absolutely cutting edge, one wonders how such fundamental aspects of manufacturing as what kind of paint gets put on their toys can slip right under the noses of the quality control inspectors of some of the biggest toy companies in the world.
If anything, this debacle should serve as an indictment of the American way of doing business: always trying to get more for less, cutting corners, and putting out a cheap, profitable product at the expense of public safety.
So, why, oh why has this turned into a discussion of China's unsafe manufacturing processes, to the extent that Mattel and Hasbro and made to look more like the victims than like the villains that they really are here?
I suspect I know why, and I'm certainly not the first person to adopt this theory: these are all the products of a systematic effort to undermine China's attempts to establish itself as a world power.
I am no fan of China or the way they do things: the 1989 Tianmen Square Massacre, by itself, has forever turned me off to them, especially considering they don't seem to be doing things any differently since then. I won't discount that there are shady practices going on in terms of how they manufacture their foodstuffs, their plastics, and whatnot. It is entirely possible and even likely.
But I submit that the media campaign that has been going on for the last several months to "expose" these practices, which has come to a head with the whole Mattel scandal, seems, on its face, extremely heavy-handed, and not very even-handed. It just does not seem credible that an industry giant like Mattel would be so oblivious to the processes employed by its sub-contractors that it would release finished products bearing its own badging before the lapse would be discovered.
And so my theory of a concerted media effort to put a big black smear on the burgeoning economic giant that is China is born. Personally, it seems to me a VERY convenient coincidence that the biggest 'victims' of China's shoddy manufacturing processes are extremely prominent American companies. And of course, the banner headline of many an American periodical seem intent to emphasize that it was products made in China that were hazardous, not products of Mattel or Hasbro.
Hey, if the world is to blame a country full of shitty, sub-standard manufacturing practices, we should equally blame the people who contract people from this country and who make use of these sub-standard manufacturing processes without imposing their own quality-control which, one would think after over THIRTY years in the manufacturing business, they would have perfected by now. You want to crucify China? Well, include the "two thieves" (and possibly more) as well: the idiots who had their products made there and left the Chinese to their own devices without a hint of quality control.
I don't pretend to know all the facts here, and that's precisely why I ask these questions and encourage people to ask their own. The knee-jerk reaction to all is to conclude that products made in China are bad. Period. I think a problem as serious as millions of defective consumer products deserves a more intelligent response than that, and certainly a more intelligent response than what we have been getting in the media so far.
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