Rivoli Questions Ch. 4
1. How do your consumer choices, and the choices of the rest of US consumers, explain the rapid recent rise in exports of US cotton to China?
2. Why does Nelson's cotton travel to China? And, which represents a greater portion of your T-shirt's price, the cotton or the labor involved in making cotton into a shirt?
3. Write a few sentences in which you characterize Shanghai of 1920-1949 and the role of cotton.
4. When did China begin making T-shirts for the US market?
I like her summary description of the landscape of Shanghai:
"southeastern China is a giant factory floor.
5. Rivoli's descriptions of the processes that transform baled cotton into cloth are vivid. Learn the sequence from bale to shirt.
6. How is sewing different from the other processes in the sequence?
7. How has T-shirt manufacture changed since the privatization of industry in China?
8. What is Shanghai Knitwear? How much do they charge per dozen of T-shirts?
9. When did China become the world's apparel export leader? When did their emergence begin? What has happened to the US's share of apparel exports during this period?
10. Summarize "the race to the bottom argument".
11. What's your opinion of this argument?