After food safety, toys quality, the conditions of Chinese factories are questioned. From The New York Times:
China Labor Watch, which is based in New York, said that it investigated eight Chinese factories over the last year and discovered widespread labor violations, including the hiring of under-age workers, mandatory overtime, unsafe working conditions and managers who engaged in verbal and sexual abuse.
In one instance, the group said a toy factory in southern China hired 1,000 junior high school students who had not yet graduated in the impoverished southwestern Guangxi province.
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Also see China’s Diseased Pigs (1 Letter), which said “Given our exportation of large-scale intensive confinement facilities, it is tragic, though not surprising, that disease is devastating the Chinese industry. With this industrialization often comes overcrowding, inadequate ventilation and related physiological stress ” factors implicated as heightening the risk of disease outbreaks.”
