RE: MG Cyberster goes on sale priced from £55k
Discussion
I completely agree, and actively try to avoid Chinese made goods where possible, but I'm 99.999% sure that most of the "the minerals are mined by children!" and "bloody chinese!" lot don't actually give a damn about either of those things in any other context, and are just being bed wetters about EVs.
Jader1973 said:
It is very hard to avoid anything with Chinese content. Are there any mobile phones that aren’t made in China for example?
However, it is very easy to not buy the second most expensive thing you own (after a house) from a Chinese company, and send your money off to the Chinese Communist Party.
This. And yes most Samsung phones are not made in China.However, it is very easy to not buy the second most expensive thing you own (after a house) from a Chinese company, and send your money off to the Chinese Communist Party.
otolith said:
I guess people will just have to settle for a nice VW group electric SUV instead. Still be chock full of Chinese components, but not visible for virtue signalling purposes.
It depends where the employment and value added goes doesn't it? Some Chinese content is hard to avoid. 100% Chinese is easy to avoid. I don't avoid Chinese government goods, where ever possible, because of their human rights or whatever, that's a whole other minefield. I do so because we, the west, are already in an economic and ideological war with China and Russia and their s
tbag friends. You can pretend we aren't because it suits your consumer lifestyle if you like just as I ignore where that lovely Gulf 102 comes from. You can also dismiss avoiding the often false economy of buying Chinese crap as 'virtue signaling' if straw men make you feel better, just don't ever complain about the state of your economy when you just sent the Chinese government 60 grand to put a shiny new "lifestyle roadster" on the drive. In the current state of global politics, becoming even more reliant on China in your supply chain is just stupid. Edited by pheonix478 on Wednesday 26th June 17:22
GeniusOfLove said:
There does seem to be quite a strong pattern on PH of people who cared not one jot about the human rights of the people who made their TV, clothes, Amazon tat, computers and gadgets, the oil and gas they burn, or anything else they consume and neither did they give a damn about the environmental impact of these products, but when it comes to EVs they insist on only the most ethically sourced and made cars woven by hand from hemp by people paid a living wage with fair working conditions, and that the vehicle must have zero environmental impact. Most odd.
Well as I started this I guess this is aimed partially at me so to calm your concerns I've got an EV, think it's brilliant and the best bit is that most the leccy where I live comes from utility scale diesel generators so no organic cannabis plants are harmed. My take on buying Chinese state built cars is economic and political, I wouldn't buy one of their ICE stboxes either.It's far, far too late to be boycotting Chinese goods. We handed the economic reins to China 20 years ago when we starting buying disposable rubbish from them by the ship-load. It strikes me as slightly ironic that in reality what has caused people to start to complain about China is them becoming more like us.
I think people need to recognise the difference between a car built in china, a car built buy a Chinese company, and a car built by a company owned by the Chinese state itself.
It is perfectly reasonable to be okay with the first 2 and not the last one without being a hypocrite. The Chinese state is, according to Amnesty International, currently engaged in human rights abuses bordering on genocide. They also own MG. If I told you that Lawrence Stroll was currently in the process of committing genocide, would it make you not want to buy an Aston Martin. It might not, and that's your choice, but would you have a go at someone who said it did stop them wanting an Aston Martin? Not wanting your money to end up in the hands of an organisation committing wide-scale organised human rights abuses isn't a ridiculous position for somebody to have, even if you don't personally have a problem with it.
It is perfectly reasonable to be okay with the first 2 and not the last one without being a hypocrite. The Chinese state is, according to Amnesty International, currently engaged in human rights abuses bordering on genocide. They also own MG. If I told you that Lawrence Stroll was currently in the process of committing genocide, would it make you not want to buy an Aston Martin. It might not, and that's your choice, but would you have a go at someone who said it did stop them wanting an Aston Martin? Not wanting your money to end up in the hands of an organisation committing wide-scale organised human rights abuses isn't a ridiculous position for somebody to have, even if you don't personally have a problem with it.
murphyaj said:
It is perfectly reasonable to be okay with the first 2 and not the last one without being a hypocrite. The Chinese state is, according to Amnesty International, currently engaged in human rights abuses bordering on genocide.
True, but then so is Israel and the USA was well known to be incarcerating and actively torturing people for years without any intention of pressing any sort of criminal charges against them until relatively recently (it may still be, I've lost track)... China's government is undoubtedly doing horrific things, but we need to be careful not to think it's in any as unique or even particularly unusual in that regard. Realistically if we want to find human rights abuses, we can look far closer to home... the solution that quite a lot of our own political establishment are proposing to the fact that what the UK is trying to do with asylum seekers is clearly in breach of the human rights charter we've signed up to, is to throw away that human rights charter. Whilst that may be nothing compared to what China is doing, it's hardly allows us to take any sort of moral high-ground.
Edited by kambites on Wednesday 26th June 17:53
kambites said:
True, but then so is Israel and the USA was well known to be incarcerating and actively torturing people for years without any intention of pressing any sort of criminal charges against them until relatively recently (it may still be, I've lost track)... China's government is undoubtedly doing horrific things, but we need to be careful not to think it's in any as unique or even particularly unusual in that regard.
I don't get your point at all. Even if you take the view that they are all as bad as each other, the US and Israeli governments don't sell lifestyle consumer goods. I expect lots of people would indeed boycott those goods if they did.kambites said:
True, but then so is Israel and the USA was well known to be incarcerating and actively torturing people for years without any intention of pressing any sort of criminal charges against them until relatively recently (it may still be, I've lost track)... China's government is undoubtedly doing horrific things, but we need to be careful not to think it's in any as unique or even particularly unusual in that regard.
Realistically if we want to find human rights abuses, we can look far closer to home... the solution that quite a lot of our own political establishment are proposing to the fact that what the UK is trying to do with asylum seekers is clearly in breach of the human rights charter we've signed up to, is to throw away that human rights charter. Whilst that may be nothing compared to what China is doing, it's hardly allows us to take any sort of moral high-ground.
As I understand it, with the exception of what Israel is up to in Gaza, the scale of what is going on in China does make it pretty unique in the modern day. I may need to be corrected on that if someone has some solid information, but from what i have seen the treatment of the uighurs is on a totally different scale to anything the UK or any of her allies has done in several generations. The UK has done some questionable things in recent years, but I am not aware of any credible accusations of genocide.Realistically if we want to find human rights abuses, we can look far closer to home... the solution that quite a lot of our own political establishment are proposing to the fact that what the UK is trying to do with asylum seekers is clearly in breach of the human rights charter we've signed up to, is to throw away that human rights charter. Whilst that may be nothing compared to what China is doing, it's hardly allows us to take any sort of moral high-ground.
Edited by kambites on Wednesday 26th June 17:53
Also, going to my point, this is about company ownership. You can say what you like about the UK government; but it doesn't own any car companies. Neither does the UK government, or Israel (that I know of), so you can't buy a car that any of them make.
pheonix478 said:
I don't get your point at all. Even if you take the view that they are all as bad as each other, the US and Israeli governments don't sell lifestyle consumer goods. I expect lots of people would indeed boycott those goods if they did.
I was just making the point that what you propose boycotting isn't really China, it's "governments". And whilst yes it's true to say that most Western governments don't directly produce consumer goods, you can argue that they profit nearly as much from the production of them within their jurisdiction via taxation, etc. as the Chinese government does through ownership. murphyaj said:
As I understand it, with the exception of what Israel is up to in Gaza, the scale of what is going on in China does make it pretty unique in the modern day.
I think you're almost certainly right, at least if viewed in absolute terms simply because China directly controls a quarter of the world's population or whatever it is. In reality the answer is always going to be "we don't know"; you can tell by reading about British politics in the most right and left-wing media how good our press is at bending or outright breaking the truth. God knows how much we can believe of what they all (broadly speaking) agree on. Certainly Canada is well documented as doing with its native population almost exactly what China is accused of with the Uyghurs as recently as about a decade or so ago. The world is, sadly, a pretty horrible place.
ETA: To be clear, I have absolutely no problem with people boycotting Chinese government goods, or Chinese goods in general for that matter. In fact I have great respect for it as long as they really understand why they're doing it, as opposed to jumping on a(n often rather naive) bandwagon. I do, however, have a problem with people chastising others for not doing the same.
Edited by kambites on Wednesday 26th June 18:07
pheonix478 said:
It depends where the employment and value added goes doesn't it? Some Chinese content is hard to avoid. 100% Chinese is easy to avoid. I don't avoid Chinese government goods, where ever possible, because of their human rights or whatever, that's a whole other minefield. I do so because we, the west, are already in an economic and ideological war with China and Russia and their stbag friends. You can pretend we aren't because it suits your consumer lifestyle if you like just as I ignore where that lovely Gulf 102 comes from. You can also dismiss avoiding the often false economy of buying Chinese crap as 'virtue signaling' if straw men make you feel better, just don't ever complain about the state of your economy when you just sent the Chinese government 60 grand to put a shiny new "lifestyle roadster" on the drive. In the current state of global politics, becoming even more reliant on China in your supply chain is just stupid.
Was that the two minute hate against Eastasia, with whom we have always been at war? tbag friends. You can pretend we aren't because it suits your consumer lifestyle if you like just as I ignore where that lovely Gulf 102 comes from. You can also dismiss avoiding the often false economy of buying Chinese crap as 'virtue signaling' if straw men make you feel better, just don't ever complain about the state of your economy when you just sent the Chinese government 60 grand to put a shiny new "lifestyle roadster" on the drive. In the current state of global politics, becoming even more reliant on China in your supply chain is just stupid. There are certainly diplomatic and trade disputes with China, interested parties asking for protectionism, and politicians in need of a bogeyman (Trump, particularly), but we and they are now deeply economically entwined. Which is good, because you tend to try to avoid going to war with trading partners. Not sure which country's automotive industry you are trying to protect by buying a German/Korean product, but it's not the UK's. Which is convenient, because we don't really have one - similar attitudes to foreign cars kept our domestic industry in business churning out utter crap for longer than it deserved to, but not forever.
I was actually hopeful that competition from the Chinese would lead the complacent and largely hopeless European manufacturers to up their game, but it looks as if they are going to get the protectionism they desire and the EU consumers will get palmed off with whatever overpriced dullness VW and Stellantis see fit.
otolith said:
I was actually hopeful that competition from the Chinese would lead the complacent and largely hopeless European manufacturers to up their game, but it looks as if they are going to get the protectionism they desire and the EU consumers will get palmed off with whatever overpriced dullness VW and Stellantis see fit.
It's a difficult one. On the one hand, the European car makers are in desperate need of a kick up the arse; on the other, they will never be able to compete directly with manufacturers working in a country where the average cost of semi-skilled labour is about four pounds an hour. Of course ultimately that will equalise as Chinese wages rise to meet European ones (or European ones fall to meet Chinese ones, I'm not sure there's really a difference), but that will be a very painful, protracted process and it's unlikely that any of the current manufacturers will survive it under European ownership. Of course the West created this mess itself by throwing manufacturing contracts, and hence access to most of our IP, at China. We might be able to make a valid argument that China should honour or patents if we didn't blatantly ignore theirs in return.
ETA: Actually almost all of the European car makers have said they don't want tariffs on Chinese car imports because (a) they know China will respond in kind and it's a big export market for them and (b) they make half their cars in China now anyway.
Edited by kambites on Wednesday 26th June 19:24
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