Forget the North Pole; Santa’s Workshop Is in China

Christmas may have begun in the little town of Bethlehem, but these days it seems to come straight out of China.

Those festive ornaments dripping from your tree? Made in China. The twinkling lights that deck the malls? Also from China. Stockings, wreaths, wrapping paper, toys, the holly and the ivy (the plastic kind)--you name it: Most of what makes the yuletide gay for Americans is produced in this country.

It’s a situation whose irony is as pungent as mulled wine. China, the world’s biggest officially atheistic nation, whose human rights abuses are regularly deplored by Washington, has become almost indispensable to American celebrations of a holiday of religious origin and relentless good cheer.

“There’s something wrong with this picture,” said John Saxtan, editor in chief of a U.S. trade journal specializing in the gift industry, which is dominated by Chinese goods.

Actually, what the picture provides is an object lesson in globalization, an example of how trade and tradition have brought together East and West in a relationship from which both sides benefit.

It also illustrates how complex U.S. ties with a country like China have become in a world where politics and economics intertwine--and often conflict.

For the U.S., the fruits of the exchange are conspicuous: a Christmas with all the trimmings.

The numbers say it all. In the first eight months of this year, Americans imported $78 million in artificial Christmas trees from China, plus a whopping $535 million in ornaments to hang on them, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. They also spent $211 million in Christmas lights from China to help make the season bright.

Astonishingly, imports of these items over the same eight-month span have shot up 85% in just three years.

For under the tree, there’s $755 million worth of stuffed toys, $639 million in dolls, $32 million in electric trains and $21 million worth of puzzles--all labeled “Made in China.”

The huge turnover makes China the No. 1 exporter of such goods to the U.S.

Indeed, if for some reason China were suddenly to shut down as Santa’s biggest workshop, “probably well over half” the merchandise now available “would not be on the shelves,” said Saxtan, whose Chicago-based journal, Giftware News, serves more than 30,000 American retailers.

The enormous appetite for holiday items has put visions of plum profits dancing in the heads of entrepreneurs here.

Wang Ren of the Zhongyi Gifts Import & Export Co., a Beijing subsidiary of one of China’s bigger conglomerates, estimates that sales of Christmas paraphernalia rake in as much as $100 million a year for his company. Almost all the goods are sold on order to the U.S. and Europe.

Smaller players have elbowed in on the act too, although competition is fierce.

“Business has been very good throughout the ‘90s,” said Zhang Jun, head of the Christmas merchandising section of the Dalian Handicrafts Import & Export Co. in northern China. “Our annual turnover for Christmas items is around $6 million to $8 million.”

Zhang sees nothing ironic about her country’s leading role in manufacturing Christmas cheer for the West, even though she lives in a land where anyone who wants to observe a religious holiday must do so through officially approved channels.

“Whatever foreign countries need, we’ll produce,” she said. “We have favorable conditions for producing handicrafts. Why not take advantage of it?”

Those “favorable conditions” can be summed up in two words: cheap labor.

With 100 million migrant workers trolling the country for jobs, China has a ready source of people eager to serve as Santa’s elves.

Yet not all the labor may be so willing. In 1997, political dissident Bao Ge, who was jailed for demonstrating in honor of victims of the1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, claimed that he had spent part of his 2 1/2-year imprisonment in a “reform-through-labor” camp outside Shanghai assembling Christmas lights bound for the U.S.

“I knew they were to be exported to America because I saw red tags with ‘USA’ written on them,” he said by telephone from New York, where he now lives.

Bao and his fellow inmates toiled 16 to 20 hours a day and were beaten by their guards, despite laws that prohibit overwork and maltreatment of prisoners, he said.

“The working conditions were very bad. There were no workshops, so we worked in our cells,” he said.

Such allegations of human rights abuses are routinely taken up by politicians and activists in the U.S. who accuse the Clinton administration of being soft on China.

Trade unions decry China’s labor practices and oppose Beijing’s pending accession to the World Trade Organization. Human rights groups around the world mount occasional boycotts of Chinese-made products.

But a ban on Chinese goods would make it difficult, if not impossible, for most Americans to enjoy the kind of Christmas they have come to expect.

Aides to two of China’s strongest critics on Capitol Hill, Sens. Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.) and Jesse Helms (R-N.C.)--both of whom voted against permanent normal trade relations with China--said their bosses do not favor a total embargo on Chinese goods.

Rather, both men want the U.S. government to be more diligent in identifying which Chinese companies use prison labor to make products.

That’s a tall order, Bao said.

“It’s hard to distinguish which parts of products come from prisons and which come from real factories,” he said. “That’s why I can’t call on American residents to boycott Christmas items coming from China.”

The great demand abroad for all things Christmas has meant jobs for thousands of Chinese workers.

Globalization also has had a cultural impact here, as more and more sophisticated urbanites adopt the holiday for themselves.

Colored lights and trees are now fixtures in many department stores, restaurants, hotels and even post offices in Beijing and Shanghai. Last year, Hallmark launched a line of Christmas cards in China.

For most Chinese, the holiday is devoid of religious content (as are the Hallmark cards sold here). The Communist regime prefers it that way; last year, authorities ordered public venues such as hotels not to play Christmas music with overtly religious lyrics. But the government welcomes the stimulus Christmas gives to domestic consumption.

Instead of a chance to gather around the hearth with family--an activity more associated with Chinese New Year--the emphasis here is on friendship and fun.

“It makes you feel warm in this cold winter,” said Shen Jia, a 21-year-old student. “It has nothing to do with religion. I buy a lot of gifts and receive a lot of gifts.”

“People need excuses to have fun,” added architect Xie Jun, 29. “There are too few Chinese festivals, and most of those are supposed to be family-reunion times, so we have to borrow holidays from the West.”

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Yuletide Exporter

China is the leading exporter to the U.S. of a variety of Christmas goods and gifts. The figures below show how much of each commodity China exported to the U.S. during the first eight months of 2000, along with China’s market share of the U.S. imports of each commodity.

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Commodity Amt. Exported Share of Import Market Stuffed toys $755 million 95% Christmas tree ornaments $535 million 78% Dolls $639 million 86% Christmas lights $211 million 93% Artificial Christmas trees $78 million 82% Electric trains $32 million 58% Puzzles $21 million 40%

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Source: U.S. Census Bureau