Does everyone in your particular country have a decent living wage, proper food and housing, access to free or low cost health care, basic human and workers rights with education for all? Until that happens, no-one can really throw stones at another country for its behaviour.

It is terrible that workers in China are treated as slave labour, but as pointed out twice now, a bad job is better than starvation. It is equally terrible that a percentage of people in one of the leading countries of the so-called 'civilised' Western World cannot afford proper health care, or are being laid off just so others can have their bonuses.

Ending Slavery in the Western half of this world didn't come overnight, some might say it still hasn't ended, just the that origin of the 'slaves' is different. It will take a long time and we will have to make adjustments to our own lifestyles to make it happen... but the cynic in me just can't see that happening unilaterally.

In the meantime, to salve our own consciences, we can try to avoid buying goods we know have been produced or assembled in China (although this will prove difficult), we can buy locally sourced food that we can track the provenance on (many supermarkets in the UK name the district and some even the farm), we can grow more of our own, we can - in the words of Christian Aid one year - live simply so that others can simply live.

LTS