The international community could do a lot more to stop this horror. International leaders could condemn this for a start. They could put sanctions on the chinese ruling class, or Chinese businesses, as well as exclude Chinese participation in international events (such as the Olympics).
Your local representative could raise awareness to such measures to the ruling class in your country, and vote in favor for them in your national assembly. At the very least your local representative could call to shame any other member of the ruling class that is not publicly and vocally condemning this horror.
The countries you picked as an example is a little curious. Sanctions against Russia were really weak and limited, I don’t think anybody had any intentions for them to work at all. The sanctions of Cuba and Venezuela (or embargo in the case of Cuba) were targeted against their autonomy, i.e. countries were not OK with their economic policies so they imposed the sanctions (which were more devastating then any action by the government in Cuba). In the case of Venezuela the sanctions are targeted against a democratically elected government in favor of an opposition that was never elected. The goal here is to abolish democracy, what do you expect the Venezuelan government to do?
This leaves North Korea, which is a genuine example of sanctions not working (and in fact casing harm in them self, since the victims are often starving citizens). However threats of further sanctions have worked in the past to prevent North Korea from developing a nuclear weapons program (which they later developed anyway). So I’ll give you that one.
But now let’s turn to South Africa. The Apartheid government was supported by many rich nations throughout the late 20th century. Their crimes got worse and worse over the years. Until the international community finally came together in the last decade of the century and imposed heavy sanctions, even excluded them from participating in cultural and sporting events. The apartheid government finally collapsed and South Africa got their first democratically elected precedent that represented a majority of the nation in 1994.
But I don’t think it is fair to talk only about the failure of sanctions to actively work in this context, the alternative here (as per ancestor comment) is military intervention. I could just as easily come up with a list of countries where military intervention did not resolve anything (or left the country seriously damage):
• Cuba
• Libya
• Syria
• Afghanistan
• Yemen
• Somalia
You could make the case for Rwanda, East Timor, Cambodia, or even Nazi Germany. But those cases are more nuanced than that, and claiming that military intervention was a “response that worked” would be an inexcusable simplification of how the events unfolded.
I doubt you can fully eliminate China-sourced products but looking at "TAA compliant" products is a start. TAA compliance is a US federal standard that guarantees a minimum level of manufacturing involvement in TAA countries [1], which is a list that does not include China.
I'm not going to pretend I'm able to avoid China in all my purchasing decisions but I now do some research to avoid China-made or at least China-designed products.
Sounds like there might be demand for some certification that looks into the whole supply chain of a company, and can offer levels of “Made in the US” certification, bronze, silver, gold, platinum for 100% end to end. Similarly, it would be great for an estimate and certification of carbon emissions of the supply chain for each product.
Made in the USA is a bit...of a pipe dream. U.S. cost of living is higher, so prices for all products would skyrocket.
However, there's MANY countries that are NOT China. We could instead certify products against supporting bad regimes, and using slave / prison labor in the supply chain.
For products where labor is a big input, yeah the delta is probably too high for most unless we get carbon taxes, tariffs, or some other factor that evens the field, but the US also supposedly has quite a bit of highly automated manufacturing. And the purpose is to allow people who place a premium on that to consider it.
But yeah, it could also serve to give visibility into the breakdown of countries of origin, for those who just want to avoid sending money to countries they view as abusive.
