For the last few weeks, all eyes have been on China. They hosted a stunning Olympic games and won tons of gold medals to boot. It is understandable, then, that there would be a renewed focus on China in the media and in the minds of the American people. We thought we'd take a look at China too. Over the next few days, we'll look at China as it relates to Wal-Mart.

Today, we'll look at the role of China in manufacturing.

If you've followed our campaign you undoubtedly know that more than 70% of the goods Wal-Mart sells come from China. If Wal-Mart were a country, it would be China's 8th largest trading partner ahead of Canada, Russia and Australia. They are responsible for roughly a tenth of the US imports from China, and import almost twice as many products from China as any other company.

Wal-Mart has a long history of forcing it's suppliers to accept low prices for its goods. Suppliers typically accept these prices because of the number of products Wal-Mart can sell. But when they aren't making quite as much as they should be, they have to make up the difference somehow, and that means looking for cheap labor. Wal-Mart pits its vendors against one another to look for the cheapest labor, creating a race to the bottom. Recently, looking for cheap labor means going to China, and that is just what many Wal-Mart vendors have done.

But with China's rapidly modernizing economy, there has been quite a bit of speculation recently that China will no longer be the cheapest source of labor anymore. Today's Kansas City Star had an article about manufacturers looking elsewhere for cheap labor and speculating that Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and others were set to become major centers of manufacturing in the future.

As manufacturing shifts from China to other countries, Wal-Mart and its vendors are sure to follow. It is important to remember that it is not China that is the problem. Rather the problem stems from a system that takes advantage of workers to benefit large corporations like Wal-Mart. The labor in these countries is cheap because factories cut corners on safety, and are not regulated and can demand long hours of workers and pay them little.