People in the streets of Beijing during an especially smoggy day. Credit: http://www.thatsmags.com/beijing/post/21239/heavy-smog-expected-to-hit-beijing-for-next-5-days
Director Josh Fox’ film, How to Let Go of the World and Love All The Things Climate Can’t Change, is truly eye-opening. The part filmed in Beijing was most horrifying to me. Fox says when he first arrived in Beijing, he thought it was foggy, but in fact he was seeing pollutants suspended in the air. This pollution kills millions of Chinese every year and is caused by China’s factories and coal power plants.
Beijing struck me as a hellish place. I cannot imagine a life in which I fear for my health when going outside. Of course, I benefit from cities like Beijing, where cheap, poorly regulated manufacturing produces goods I use every day. Perhaps my buying choices indicate that having access to cheap products is more important to me than the lives of people in China. Maybe I could pay more for the version made in the United States with stricter emissions and labor standards, but I would rather save some money and buy the one made in China, knowing that it will contribute to deadly pollution.
How could I recognize the negative impact of my choices yet not feel inclined to change them? I realized I had a moral justification for my actions. Nobody forced the Chinese to make factories and burn huge amounts of coal. They chose that path as a development strategy, and they have benefitted greatly from it. They make a lot of money manufacturing products and maintain their immense market share because they (their leaders) chose not to have certain health and safety regulations as a cost-cutting measure. This is to be expected in a country without a true democracy (fair elections, freedom of speech, etc.). Without democracy, a leader who wants to make cheap products can do so at the expense of the working class.
It is no secret that capitalism can exploit certain groups. However, people only interact in a free economy if they feel they stand to gain from it. Generally, the low-wage workers operating in unsafe Chinese factories chose to work there because the monetary benefits outweigh the costs in their mind. To me, capitalism’s tendency to exploit certain people is not a problem inherent to it, but rather something that is caused by poor governance–capitalism didn’t make China’s air deadly, a lack of a democratic system in which people could demand clean air caused this.