"Made in China"

Ni Hao (Hello) Recently I have been taking a Chinese (Mandarin) Language class because I find the chinese culture very interesting. I have a chinese back ground as my parents are from Hong Kong and Grandparents from China. As a child I didnt care much for my culture because I thought it was normal and thats the way everyone lives but as I learn more in design world about culture and global production I find it fascinating and the fact that I was brought up with a chinese background makes it a little more personal.
By chance or luck we recently had a lecture with Jonathan Baldwin who gave a really interesting lecture on China. He called it "Made in China" He talked about the Chinese inventions such as Silk, Tea, Gun Powder and many more. With all these inventions the Chinese Isolation came about as the chinese didnt need to trade with anyone else around the world as they produced all their own products. It has been said that Marco Polo broke the isolation when he introduced Europeans to Central Asia, China. The Opium war started when China stopped trading tea for Opium with Britain. China got defeated in both wars leaving the government to tolerate the opium trade. Hong Kong became the middle trading place.
All this history leads to the present where a lot of products are made from china with cheap labour. This causes a lot of poverty in China. The difference between the rich and poor is extreme because the rich as filthy rich and the poor are living on near nothing. It is known that there is a new Billionaire in China everyday which gives you an idea of the increase of China's economic power. Jonathan Baldwin showed us an interesting video on China and it showed the cheap labour of China is taking over jobs all over the world. It also shows big companies such as apple sending there products to be manufactured in China. This means less money is spent on production and more income for the company. As Jonathan explained that jobs in the design world are hard to find as we are up against people in China, I got a little kick up the bum and feel I need to work A LOT harder. Learning Mandarin is one step in the right direction.