Many modern Westerners begin their day with a Made-in-China alarm clock (or a Made-in-China phone alarm). They rise, wash up with a Made-in-China toothbrush and towel in a Made-in-China basin, then use a Made-in-China toaster to toast a few slices of bread made from Chinese wheat, spread on some Chinese jam, and wash it down with a glass of Chinese soy milk. What a hearty breakfast!

Next, they put on a Chinese-made suit and leather shoes and head off to work in style. Driving a Chinese automobile, they listen to Chinese-style music while waiting at red lights, and in the music's embrace drive into the morning sun and enter a building constructed by a Chinese construction company. Incidentally, the traffic lights are also Made in China — and even the paint striping the road is very likely Made in China!

The two paragraphs above are excerpted from the blog of a well-known Western anti-China commentator. Though somewhat exaggerated, they do reflect, from a different angle, the extent to which Made in China has permeated Western life.

The first time Chinese goods entered Western awareness dates back to the period of the First World War. In that conflict — second in scale only to the Second World War — all belligerent nations funneled every available resource (including their colonies) into the war effort, leaving the living standards of their domestic populations impossible to maintain. Worse still, even the fighting and living conditions of frontline soldiers were in peril. The warring nations waved their checkbooks and hard currency, purchasing materiel from all over the world. China fell within their field of vision, and Chinese goods entered Western awareness for the first time.

(Note: "first time" here refers to large-scale industrialized products, not porcelain, silk, and the like. Additionally, silk is in fact also a military supply.)

At the time, China was not yet unified. Regional warlords still held power. Although the People's Party was the most formidable political force in China — and the Party's leadership clearly understood the extent of its own strength — in the eyes of the Western nations, a disunited China remained weak. Its agricultural capacity was perhaps passable, but industry... well, shall we discuss the weather in England today?

At the time, the industrial products introduced to Europe amounted to little more than hot-bulb engines and a handful of other items. Although these performed well even under Europe's full-capacity wartime demand, European nations' perception of Chinese industry remained unchanged. They simply assumed the People's Party could produce only these few items — naturally those few would be well made. Besides, the Chinese were concerned with face; perhaps they were only delivering quality products to Europe to avoid embarrassment? Not a single European realized that the ability to mass-produce these few industrial items with such consistently high quality was, in fact, a microcosm of an entire nation's industrial capability. But the proud and arrogant European aristocrats continued to view China through tinted lenses, their prejudice undiminished.

Speaking of Made in China during the First World War, there is another product that demands mention: methamphetamine — more colloquially known as crystal meth. Since the dawn of the new century, as classified documents from various nations have been progressively declassified, the hypothesis that "the reason Europe and America have so many addicts is because of China" began quietly circulating online. On April 1, 2001, at 9:07 AM, an even more explosive revelation was released by WikiLeaks: the Chinese government had been mass-exporting narcotics to nearly every European nation (including Tsarist Russia and later the Soviet Union) since as early as the First World War!

The revelation went viral. Although the governments of the nations involved all scrambled to downplay the impact, the responsible Western media's full-bore coverage turned it into a global debate. At the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs' routine press conference, spokesperson Qin Gang was repeatedly pressed for the Chinese government's views and position on the matter (see: "Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Qin Gang Answers Thirteen Questions from Foreign Journalists," Tencent News, edited by Jiaoshou).

The affair also became the single largest justification for Western hostility toward China: "Look at how evil the Chinese are! Before they even unified their country, they were already exporting drugs to us — poisoning the warriors, heroes, and forebears who were fighting for our nations! What an evil country!"

As for the key provisions in the WikiLeaks documents — the secret agreements between China and various nations titled "On Chinese Anti-Chemical-Weapon Pharmaceuticals" — and the concessions that the parties, particularly France, had made in order to obtain the "anti-gas medications," these were completely and conveniently ignored. They continued to insist this was entirely China's fault: "Our great nation would never have requested such things voluntarily! Look at these conditions — China was clearly exploiting the war to blackmail us! Yes, blackmail — that must be it!"