Dayenu 2007. Shanxi style.

If it were just children enslaved and not being forced to bake bricks....it would be enough.
If it were just slave children being forced to bake bricks and not murdered workers....it would be enough.
If it were just murdered workers and not parents searching for their kidnapped children....it would be enough.

But the Chinese slavery scandal just keeps expanding and worsening.

From the Middle East Times:

China's slavery scandal widened Tuesday with the state-run press reporting that young girls had been forced into prostitution at a brickyard work camp where abuse and beatings were routine. The latest reports come as the slavery ring that was initially reported only in Shanxi and Henan provinces in north and central China had in fact been operating elsewhere around the country for as long as a decade.

According to the government, police have so far rescued up to 570 enslaved workers, some of them children, and detained nearly 170 people suspected of trafficking, beating, and enslaving workers in Shanxi and Henan. ...

As authorities focused on ending the slavery, a report in the Communist Party magazine Democracy and Law said that some female slaves had been forced into prostitution.

Two girls aged 17 and 16 had been forced into prostitution at the Wangjiang brick factory in Hebei province, immediately to the north of Henan, in 2004, according to the report that was picked up by the Xinhua news agency.

The girls were lured from their village in Shanxi province with the promises of high wages and good jobs at a tile factory in early 2004, but soon discovered that they had been tricked.

At first the girls worked alongside other laborers 16 hours a day, receiving regular beatings for not working hard enough, it said. But soon the brickyard boss began prostituting the girls to the workers, many of whom were handicapped or mentally ill, deducting portions of their meager salaries each time they took one of the girls, it said.

Meanwhile, the China Daily newspaper said that factories had been operating as far south as Guangdong province where workers had received tiny salaries but complained of routine beatings and unsanitary and prison-like work conditions.

Xinhua said in an earlier report that one man lost a toe from frostbite after running barefoot to escape a labor camp in China's far northeast Heilongjiang province.

And it just gets worse. First it was just recalled cough syrup which was killing and maiming people in Panama. Then the toothpaste showed up in America in multiple states. And then potentially lethal Chinese-made pet food began showing up.

Now it's toys. Every single toy recalled this year for safety reasons was, you guessed it, made in China.

From the New York Times:

China manufactured every one of the 24 kinds of toys recalled for safety reasons in the United States so far this year, including the enormously popular Thomas & Friends wooden train sets, a record that is causing alarm among consumer advocates, parents and regulators.

The latest recall, announced last week, involves 1.5 million Thomas & Friends trains and rail components — about 4 percent of all those sold in the United States over the last two years by RC2 Corporation of Oak Brook, Ill. The toys were coated at a factory in China with lead paint, which can damage brain cells, especially in children.

Just in the last month, a ghoulish fake eyeball toy made in China was recalled after it was found to be filled with kerosene. Sets of toy drums and a toy bear were also recalled because of lead paint, and an infant wrist rattle was recalled because of a choking hazard.

Over all, the number of products made in China that are being recalled in the United States by the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission has doubled in the last five years, driving the total number of recalls in the country to 467 last year, an annual record.

It also means that China today is responsible for about 60 percent of all product recalls, compared with 36 percent in 2000.

Much of the rise in China’s ranking on the recall list has to do with its corresponding surge as the world’s toy chest: toys made in China make up 70 to 80 percent of the toys sold in the country, according to the Toy Industry Association.

Globalization. Gotta love it.