Asia

Pulitzer Center grantee Loretta Tofani talked to KCRW's To The Point about occupational diseases Chinese factory workers suffer to produce cheap goods to export to foreign countries including the U.S.

RAIPUR, India -- To reverse military setbacks in key backcountry areas, India's Maoist insurgents have adopted a new strategy that favors coordinated mass attacks over hit-and-run guerilla warfare, and they have stepped up their recruitment efforts on the Internet.

U.S. companies say they’re not to be blamed for importing from Chinese factories with sub-par work conditions; it's up to China to figure out how to protect their own workers.

After a lifetime of spouting anti-govern ment vitriol, Varavara Rao has an easy smile. But when the silver-haired revolutionary poet greeted me at his Hyderabad apartment, his eyes burned like those of a man with plenty more in his tank.

For years, Chinese workers making nickel-cadmium batteries for U.S. distributors such as Eveready and Energizer complain of sickness, not realizing that cadmium can lead to kidney failure and death.

Hyderabad goes by the nickname “Cyberabad” for its thriving info-tech sector. Along with Bangalore, the two cities comprise the heart of India’s software empire thanks to high levels of education, job growth, and investment.

Exposure to chemicals in paint and varnish has claimed lives of Chinese workers who produce furniture for major U.S. companies like Restoration Hardware, Ethan Allen Furniture and Haverty Furniture.

Throughout China, workers making goods for export use outdated—sometimes jerry-rigged—machines that lack safety features standard in the U.S., causing workers to lose legs, arms, hands or fingers.

Workers producing Char-Broil stoves in China were given only thin gauze masks that do nothing to prevent metal dust from entering their lungs. Many end up contracting lung diseases like silicosis.

Most American businesses that import from China are small and medium-sized. Many have never visited the factories, and are unaware of any dangerous working conditions surrounding their products.

Over a 12-month period, Pulitzer Center grantee Loretta Tofani visited more than 25 factories in China to document the risks Chinese workers go through to supply American consumers with cheap goods.

HYDERABAD, India - An aggressive push by Indian state security forces over the past two years has blunted the Maoist insurgency in the state of Andhra Pradesh, a long-time guerrilla hotbed, but many have regrouped in remote parts of neighboring states where police remain ill-equipped to combat a surge in violence.