You’re not ethically sustainable, you’re Sinophobic!
China isn’t the rightful litmus of morality; your attitude towards an exploitative and capitalist system is.

They claim that God created life and the rest was made in China. For the past five decades, the “Made in China” tag has haunted our standards of consumption, treating China as a monolith of production. 

In Western societies, interacting with Chinese manufacturing has become a litmus of morality. Warped in tendencies to operate within a fabricated moral framework, we have created an illusion of ethical consumerism (ironically) under a capitalist system. 

So, it appears to be evident that companies like SHEIN and Temu are prone to mass critique. Now, I do not argue for their defense and I understand that, in many cases, these two companies have contributed to the mass exploitation of labour and the epidemic of fast fashion. But, to critique Chinese e-Commerce as a monolith, whilst overlooking the double standard that exists when assessing the ethics of fashion, revokes the validity of ethical sustainability activism.

Western Morality and Orientalism 

Since the Enlightenment era, the West has presented itself as the epitome of human evolution and ideological progress. This came at the cost of subjugating other cultures, primarily through the critique of moral and ethical standards—like condemning communities of malpractice, while dignifying Western morality on a pedestal.

As Edward Said described in his work Orientalism (1978), part of the West’s doing is creating a polar division between the Orient (the ‘East’) and the Occident (the ‘West’): where the Occident is disciplined, rational, and progressive, the Orient is dangerous exotic, and irrational. 

That precise ideology finds itself rooted in the anti-Chinese sentiments that transcend mere politics in the West. It allows for the critique of non-Western practices, like Chinese manufacturing and e-Commerce, not from a place of well-intended activism, but from a colonial sense of moral superiority.

Sinophobia in North America

The presence of institutionalised Sinophobia in North America dates to the nineteenth century, where mass migration of Chinese workers was demanded by the US and Canadian mining and industrial workforces alike. The growing population of the Chinese community on the continent marked “the rise of discriminatory political rhetoric, campaigns, and policies.” 

By 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed in the US, restricting the immigration of Chinese labourers and imposing a barrier on the assimilation processes of Asian-Americans already residing within the country. Similarly, in 1923, Canada imposed the Chinese Exclusion Act, bred on a culture of sinophobia. 

But, institutionalised discrimination does not exist in a vacuum. It was a reflection of collective anti-Chinese sentiments and a fear linked to Western moral preservation. 

China, the Global Market, and Fashion

By the 1970s, amidst the Cold War period, global perceptions of China were tainted by fears of foreign intervention. Simultaneously in 1978, China opened its economy to the global market and introduced free market policies. 

In a span of three decades, China became one of the largest global industrial and manufacturing powers, surpassing the US in 2010. The attraction of Chinese production had also stemmed from the cheaper pricing of the goods, where a larger national labour force was available to meet the high consumption needs of the global market. 

However, in 2008, two manufacturing scandals in China broke in global news, tainting the world’s reception of Chinese goods. 

The first, the 2008 Chinese Milk Scandal, found raw milk contents deliberately added to milk products, resulting in six reported deaths and multiple health concerns. The second, the Liangshan Child Labour Scandal, revealed the exploitation of child labour in Liangshan, raising questions on the ethics of Chinese manufacturing. It must also be noted that both scandals were instances of ethical standards violations, a result of China’s effort to meet the global demand of production.

Since the scandals, Chinese production has become stereotypically synonymous with unreliability and unsustainability; since then, the “Made in China” tag has become a symbol of poor factory conditions and minimum wage work. 

But, China has taken note of the Sinphobic sentiments, upheld not only by the West but by the world, against Chinese imports. In fact in Japan, the “Made in China” tags were rebranded to “Made in PCR” (People’s Chinese Republic) to boost sales across stores locally.

SHEIN, Temu, and Ethical Consumption

In collaboration with the culture of instant gratification and its convenience, the popularity of online shopping has grown expeditiously. 

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many resorted to online shopping, and e-Commerce fashion companies saw their business models flourish; SHEIN and Temu being two of the many. As the market for online fashion companies grew, so did critiques of overconsumption and the morality of fast fashion. 

While most critiques against SHEIN and Temu are valid within the scope of labour exploitation and overproduction, these arguments are often reserved solely to Chinese e-Commerce, tainting China as a monolith of production, and overlook the West’s mass contribution to unethical consumption. 

For example, in an article on the fashion blog GITTEMARY, activists have raised concerns for the lack of transparency of SHEIN, claiming the rates are comparable “to a laughable degree”, framing the issue to solely reside within the labours ethics of China. Yet, there were no mentions on the historical scoring of 0% transparency by Western name-brands including Splash, Tom Ford, Savage x Fenty, and Fashion Nova. 

Another popular critique is often directed towards the piece-work payment that SHEIN and Temu implement, a payment system that relies on production, rather than the traditional hourly-rate, which activists have claimed to “force [workers] to continuously work harder.” However, piece-work payment is a system that has existed for centuries, and is implemented across multiple industries to ensure compensation—thus, its exploitation occurs across the globe, only to be reduced to a ‘uniquely-Chinese’ problem. 

Moreover, critiques of using Uyghur forced labour by the Chinese government when discussing SHEIN and Temu is valid and may be well-intended in nature, but has provided people the luxury of performative activism: to only remember the Uyghur in reference to Chinese production. Such has bred an insensitivity when advocating for the Uyghur community, especially in reference to the rights of freedom of religious practice. 

So, while these critics are aligned with reasonable worries, they rest ineffective when they are catered and targeted against a single nation, laced with a history of xenophobia. China isn’t the rightful litmus of morality; your attitude towards an exploitative and capitalist system is.