that food from that Chinese food stall on the corner.

In fact, I bet you can spot at least 2 things that you are using right now which are made in

China.. So why does China make every-freaking-thing in the world??

Welcome to another Whack & Epified episode. Today, we will talk about the world’s factory,

China, and figure out if they are selling us products or a plan for Chinese domination.

For the first 30 years or so, China was a communist country. Which means only the government

was in the business of doing business. The common Chinese didn’t have the freedom to

work for themselves and try and earn an extra buck..

But once Big Daddy Mao died, the Chinese government decided it was okay with capitalism and other

Western evils like private business, making a profit and shopping for fun.. So up came

factories in Special Economic Zones around the country.. And I mean lots and lots of factories!

To begin with, these factories made cheap fakes of Western products.. These were exact

replicas of the originals. The quality sucked, yes, there were people in India, Bangladesh

and elsewhere who would rather pay a 100 bucks for Abibas shoes, instead of 1200 for a pair

of Adidas. And that’s how the China story began.

But as these Chinese factories got bigger and better, people from all over the world started

buying Chinese stuff. Now this gave rise to a whole new wave of champion Chinese companies, like

Lenovo, Haier and Xiaomi.

The real cash started flowing in when big international brands began to shift their manufacturing

to China. Big industrial parks came up which became cities themselves, like Foxconn’s

plant in Shenzhen, or EUPA in Xiamen, employing millions of Chinese youth looking for a better future.

Each of these Chinese factory workers made as much in a week as an American would make

in an hour of work. Now you can imagine how much cheaper it was to make things in China!

That's why a lot of them shut plants at home and they shift their base to China..

That started to create problems. Not only were people losing jobs to the Chinese, they

were also losing all their money. Since it had to buy everything from China,

America pays China about $ 220 billion every year for imports. Yup, it’s true! Even

India is caught in that trap, paying China a net of $57 billion for the stuff that we buy

from them. Back in 2012, there was big outrage in America when it turned out that

the tracksuits that US athletes wore for the opening ceremony of the London Olympics were made

in China. They still won the most gold medals though.

But there are more genuine concerns here. The Americans have been complaining

for years about extra cheap Chinese currency, which makes their exports even cheaper. Similarly,

India has complained about its IT companies not being allowed to operate on Mainland China,

which is a huge market.

China does buy stuff from the rest of the world.. It has a million millionaires, who

have some very expensive tastes. They have made China the biggest market for luxury,

accounting for 25% of all luxury products sold in the world.. Now that’s a whole lot

of bling!

In fact, just the number of people spending their money makes China the second biggest

importer in the world. But that’s still not enough to make the other countries feel not cheated.

The rapid industrialization of China has created a huge amount of prosperity there. But it's

even made the Chinese suffer – mostly in the form of untold pollution. Remember the

winter 2012, when Beijing was covered in so much smog it looked like that car from

Cheech & Chong.

China has already become the largest energy consumer in the world, 70% of which comes

from dirty, dirty coal. There is no option though. Factories must keep running..

By 2030, its estimated that China will produce an eye watering 12,000 million metric tons

of CO2, almost twice as much as India will. Living in a Chinese city would be like smoking

5 cigarettes...AT THE SAME TIME!

People’s responses to this dilemma in history have not been very encouraging. Also adding the fact

that China doesn’t have a democracy makes the situation, shall we say, a little more

unpredictable..

That’s it from us here at Whack & Epified. Like, share and subscribe. Come join the tribe.

Tell us what you think about China from your Chinese

made phones and laptops in the comment section below.