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凯莉·麦克帕兰：我这一年不买中国货
有一天，我带着一份10件家居小物件的清单出发，回家时却只带回了一件。我知道这很难，但是……
凯莉·麦克帕兰 2021年12月13日
凯莉·麦克帕兰的2021年新年决心是明知故犯地不购买任何中国制造的东西。结果，这比他想象的还要难。图片来源：沈齐莱/彭博社
我2021年的新年决心是明知故犯地不购买任何中国制造的东西。
这与中国人民无关——他们和大多数其他人一样，只想过上自己认为最好的平静生活——而与中国政府息息相关。当时，北京政权扣押了康明凯和斯帕弗两位迈克尔，以换取孟晚舟的回国。孟晚舟是一位与共产党政府关系密切的富商。北京政权过去和现在都在运营再教育营，歧视少数族裔，使用强迫劳动，威胁入侵台湾，压制香港的自由，试图欺凌该地区的邻国，建立一支希望能够恫吓任何外国势力的军队，干涉外国选举，并持续进行密集而长期的活动，窃取技术和收集数据，以破坏民主制度以及在不那么专制的政权中建立的行为规范。
任何人，哪怕只是稍微努力核实一下从大型超市货架上抢来的商品的来源，都会明白中国是主要的供应商。商品越便宜，就越有可能是在广东、江苏或浙江的工厂生产的。如果你从亚马逊上买东西，很有可能是从中国港口运过来的。即使你特意偏爱加拿大或美国公司，他们也很有可能把制造业务外包给了中国某个工资更低或安全标准更低的地方。加拿大对华十大出口商品中，只有一项涉及制造业；而中国对加拿大十大出口商品中有九项都带有附加值。所以我认为这会很困难，事实也确实如此。在某些情况下，事实证明根本找不到其他选择。要想避免向许多人认为是世界上最危险的政权提供经济支持，需要毅力、顽固不化，以及愿意支付超过最低价格的代价。这个政权禁止少数少数派以外的选举，最近刚刚庆祝了其允许的唯一政党成立100周年，而且其领导人正积极谋求终身总统的职位。
我以为会很难，结果确实如此。
我承诺之后第一次尝试购买的商品只是一团简单的麻绳。你得问问自己，为了避免把每一美元的利润分给中国，我愿意花多少时间寻找麻绳呢？结果发现，我花的时间不多，所以我额外花钱买了一些其他地方生产的橡胶紧固件。在逛了家得宝、劳氏、家居五金、加拿大轮胎和罗纳百货后，找新的门锁也费了不少劲，我终于找到了修理旧门锁的方法。我买的一把用来切瓷砖的湿锯忘了查产地，但发现做工很差，零件也不匹配，我才意识到自己的错误，把它退了，换了一把日本产的更好的——结果发现刀片是单独制造的，为时已晚，你可以猜猜是在哪里制造的。
我又一次被骗了，一盒新冠口罩给人的印象是里面装的是美国制造的，从德克萨斯州运来的。盒子确实来自德克萨斯州，但口罩却并非产自那里。这种情况并非罕见；我清楚地感觉到，尤其是在线上销售中，他们会刻意回避原产国信息。如果你足够努力，有时还是能找到的，但这需要一些努力，而且并非总能成功。
有一件事比我预想的要复杂得多，那就是找到一个价格实惠、可以放下皮划艇的车顶行李架。曾经有一段时间，你可以买到一个几乎适用于所有车辆的简易可调节行李架，但现在不行了。“通用”行李架并非真正通用，最便宜的版本来自中国。有一种很棒的替代品来自瑞典，但价格差距比我愿意支付的价格高出许多倍。在网上搜索后，我找到了一家位于缅因州的美国家族企业，规模很小，甚至有专人负责回复电子邮件。不幸的是，他们的车架是中国制造的，而不是缅因州，不过他们的客服团队很贴心地告诉我们，他们所有的拖车都是美国制造的。
当我发现除了体育用品商店之外，用绑在屋顶上的简单泡沫支架就能解决问题时，我以为自己挖到了宝。
我查了一下，他们的货源和生产廉价车顶行李架的国家一样。巧合的是，我妻子提到了一位在当地经营小生意的女士，她专门生产沙发替换垫，她同意帮我切几块适合我车顶的泡沫塑料。成功了！我感觉特别好，虽然我没问泡沫塑料是从哪里来的。
不幸的是，我在其他方面也遇到了麻烦。有一天，我列了10件家居小物件的清单出发，结果回家却只带了一件。其他的我决定不用也行。谁还需要柠檬榨汁机呢？我什么时候挤不动柠檬了？几个月来，我把东西重新摆上货架，学到的一个教训是，没有它们，生活也照样过得去。汉堡压榨机？你不能自己做汉堡？成熟点吧，伙计。
我在一个方面彻底屈服了。据我所知，某些类型的灯泡除了中国以外，根本买不到。通用电气、飞利浦、喜万年……中国，中国，中国。一家标榜自己是“加拿大骄傲”的公司，结果除了中国灯泡什么也没有。不知何故，我找到了一个匈牙利产的偏蓝灯泡，但如果灯泡插不上需要充电的插座，那就没什么用了。考虑到买灯泡的替代方案就是在昏暗的房间里摸索，而厨房的光线越来越暗，我不得不放弃，付了钱。为了稍作安慰，我选了一个据说能用13年的灯泡，这样至少暂时不用再面对这个难题了。
我也没找到家用打印机，但我还没有放弃。坚持终有回报，自力更生也是如此。我敢肯定，中国有句谚语也这么说：中国文化远比中国现行政治体制更睿智、更有吸引力。我计划在可预见的未来继续抵制，尽管我知道我永远无法百分之百地成功。俗话说：“千里之行，始于足下。”你也能猜到这句话的出处。
Kelly McParland: My year of not buying things from China
Setting off one day with a list of 10 small household items, I returned home with precisely one. I knew it would be difficult, but ...
By Kelly McParland Dec 13, 2021
Kelly McParland's resolution for 2021 was to not knowingly buy anything made in China. It turned out to be even more challenging than he imagined. Photo by Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
My New Year’s resolution for 2021 was to avoid knowingly buying anything made in China.
It had nothing to do with the Chinese people, who, like most other people just want to be able to live their lives in peace as they see best, and everything to do with the Chinese government. At the time the Beijing regime was holding the two Michaels — Kovrig and Spavor — as hostages for the return of Meng Wanzhou, a wealthy businesswoman with close connections to the communist government. It was, and is, also running re-education camps, discriminating against minorities, employing forced labour, threatening to invade Taiwan, crushing freedoms in Hong Kong, attempting to bully neighbours across the region, building a military it hopes will give it the ability to intimidate any foreign power, interfering in foreign elections and continuing its intensive and long-running campaign to steal technology and collect data it can use to disrupt democracy and established norms of behaviour among less despotic regimes.
Anyone who makes even a notional effort to check the origins of the stuff they grab off the shelves of any big-box store understands that China is the dominant supplier. The less expensive it is, the more likely it is to have been made in a factory in Guangdong, or Jiangsu or Zhejiang. If you buy it off Amazon there’s a very good chance it was shipped here from a Chinese port. Even if you make a point of favouring Canadian or U.S. firms, odds are high they outsourced their manufacturing to somewhere in China that paid lower wages or enforced lower safety standards. Only one of Canada’s top 10 exports to China involves manufacturing; nine of China’s top 10 exports to Canada have value added. So I figured it would be difficult, and it was. In some cases it proved impossible to find an alternative. It takes persistence, pig-headedness and a willingness to pay more than the lowest conceivable price to avoid offering financial support to what many believe is the world’s most dangerous regime, one that bans elections outside a few rarified echelons, recently celebrated the 100th anniversary of the only party it allows, and is headed by a leader actively angling to be president for life.
I figured it would be difficult, and it was
My first attempted post-pledge purchase was a simple ball of twine. You have to ask yourself, how much time am I willing to spend searching out twine options to avoid sending China its share of the profit from a dollar? In my case, it turned out, not much, so I paid extra to buy some rubberized fasteners made somewhere else. Finding a new gate lock also proved so much trouble after striking out at Home Depot, Lowes, Home Hardware, Canadian Tire and Rona, I just figured out how to repair the old one. I forgot to check the origin of a wet saw I bought for cutting tile, but when it proved to be cheaply made, with parts that didn’t fit, I realized my mistake and returned it for a better version from Japan — only to discover too late that the blade itself was made separately, and you can guess where.
I got fooled again on a box of COVID masks that gave every impression it contained a U.S.-made product shipped from Texas. The box did come from Texas, but it turned out the masks weren’t made there. It’s a situation that proved not to be rare; I got the distinct impression that, especially with online sales, careful efforts are made to avoid identifying the country of origin. If you try hard enough you can sometimes track it down, but it takes some effort, and doesn’t always succeed.
One purchase that proved far more complicated than I’d expected was finding an affordable roof rack for the car that could hold a kayak. There was a time you could pick up a simple adjustable rack that would fit almost any vehicle, but not any more. “Universal” racks aren’t really universal, and the least expensive versions come from Chinese sources. There is an excellent alternative that originates in Sweden, but the price gap was many times higher than I was willing to spend. After scouring the internet I found a family-owned U.S. firm based in Maine, so small they have an actual person who answers emails. Unfortunately they have their racks made in China, not Maine, though their support team obligingly advised that all their trailers are made in the U.S.
I thought I’d struck paydirt when I discovered you can get by with simple foam supports that can be strapped to the roof, except all the sports supply stores I checked get their supplies from the same country that makes cheap roof racks. Fortuitously, my wife mentioned a lady who runs a small local business making replacement cushions for sofas, who agreed to cut a couple pieces of foam that would fit the top of my car. Success! I felt particularly good about that one, though I didn’t ask where the foam came from.
Unfortunately, I struck out on other fronts. Setting off one day with a list of 10 small household items, I returned home with precisely one. The others I decided I could live without. Who needs a lemon squeezer anyway? Since when am I incapable of squeezing a lemon? One lesson I learned from months of putting things back on shelves is that life easily goes on without them. A burger press? You can’t make your own burgers? Grow up, buddy.
I did cave entirely on one front. As far as I can tell, it’s not possible to buy certain types of light bulbs from anywhere other than China. GE, Philips, Sylvania … China, China, China. A firm that promotes itself as “Proudly Canadian” proved to have nothing other than Chinese bulbs. I did find a bluish-tinted bulb manufactured in Hungary for some reason, but if a bulb doesn’t fit the socket that needs filling, it’s not much use. Given that the alternative to buying bulbs is to stumble around in darkened rooms, and the kitchen was getting steadily dimmer, I had to break down and pay up. As a small consolation I picked a bulb that’s supposed to last 13 years, so at least I won’t face that conundrum again for a while.
I also haven’t been able to find a home printer, but I haven’t given up yet. Persistence pays dividends, as does self-reliance. I’m pretty sure there’s a Chinese adage that says as much, Chinese culture being far wiser and more attractive than the current Chinese political regime. I plan to continue my boycott for the foreseeable future, though I know I’ll never achieve 100 per cent success. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” as the proverb goes. And you can guess where it comes from.
