Ethics Newsline®

On one hand, the latest flap over Chinese-made toys can be read as another ain’t-it-awful story — evidence that China’s moral barometer is in decline. Last week Mattel, the world’s largest toy company, announced its second recall within a month, this time of die-cast toy vehicles from the movie “Cars” contaminated with lead paint. The company, which buys 65 percent of its toys from China, put in place an expanded surveillance and testing system to prevent unethical suppliers from substituting cheaper, brighter lead-based coatings for the lead-free paint required by Mattel. The cost of this latest effort to combat unscrupulous Chinese vendors: $30 million.

On the other hand, the story fits into broader patterns suggesting a rise in the moral barometer. Bad though it is, there’s an encouraging trend developing here, driven by new awareness among Western consumers, increasing diligence among global regulators, and movements toward Chinese reforms.

Consumer awareness. Over the last half-century, public ethical concern in Western nations has led five-year-olds to recycle, adults to stop smoking, and automakers to marginally increase fuel efficiency. Today, those changes are all supported by law. But they began as a public insistence that, even though the law says you can toss, smoke, or guzzle, you ought not to do it. That awareness now extends to the dangers of lead paint, which I watched my father happily use in the 1950s when, like everyone else, he painted our old New England house with it. Those who argue that we’re in steep moral decline, in other words, have to contend with some pretty strong evidence of a rising barometer. If a culture cares enough about ethical problems to spot them and address them — as is happening with lead-painted toys — that itself is a sign of moral progress.

Regulatory diligence. Aiding this grassroots push are the efforts of legislators and regulators to create lasting change. For decades, Western nations have been concerned enough about the safety of food and drugs to require inspections and impose penalties. One can argue over the efficacy of those regulations — whether inspectors are funded to do enough or directed to do the right things, for instance. But without them, where would we be? Somewhere back in the Elizabethan era, when medical practice was largely unregulated and eating was a daily expression of caveat emptor, where it was left wholly to the buyer to beware of the risks.

As a measure of how far we’ve come, look at the growing emphasis on supply-chain ethics. Reports in recent years, including those from the Institute of Business Ethics in the United Kingdom and the Conference Board in the United States, have focused on the growing public demand for companies to take responsibility for every aspect of their production processes. That responsibility has now extended beyond the quality of the product itself. It includes the health and safety of overseas workers — even those employed by suppliers — and the environmental and social impact on their communities. Result: Companies like Mattel are increasingly sensitized to the actions of their overseas vendors. That, too, counts as a sign of moral progress.

Chinese reform. The real story here may be the wrenching modernization within China. On its face, the record is grim. Stories this year of deadly pet food, dangerous tires, toxic jewelry, and poisonous toothpaste have raised alarms among importers of Chinese goods, with potential harm to China’s export economy. Similar problems are arising internally, as counterfeit drugs have circulated through the system. On July 10, the government executed Zheng Xiaoyu, head of the State Food and Drug Administration, for accepting bribes totaling some $850,000, failing to police the drug industry, and approving dangerous drugs for the market. One of the highest Chinese officials ever sentenced to death, Mr. Zheng was clearly used to send a signal to other miscreants within a system that observers say remains deeply corrupt.

Yet the trend-line seems clear. International trade in the twenty-first century comes with unavoidable mandates, one of which is ethics. To continue playing in this league, China’s ethics will have to rise. That may be tough. The challenge for China is a legacy of ethical indifference, imposed by a Communist regime that sought, wherever possible, to replace the responsibility of the individual with the oppressive regulatory mechanism of the state. Draconian and invasive, that mechanism was actually quite successful in crushing ethical concerns out of business practices, shrinking the moral perimeter of individuals to the narrow radius of family and friends, and producing a society with little experience in rejecting corruption, counterfeiting, and a whatever-works mentality.

As that mechanism retreats and China looks outward, it does so with a citizenry that grew up seeing public trust as fungible, negotiable, and opportunistic. With a workforce equipped with enormous skill, energy, and drive, China is now learning that it needs one more thing to be a successful global vendor: an ethical grounding. Mattel’s object lesson for other companies trading with China is clear: Don’t count on finding trust and responsibility. Be prepared to inspect, test, and verify in ways you never thought you’d need to. Set aside $30 million just in case. But recognize that, despite all that, ethics is stirring in China, its future is more morally encouraging than its past, and when it does it right, it makes good things that the West loves to buy.

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics