Shakira, China and Channel – Weekly Voice

Renata Cabrales

They may not know Shakira’s song “Nothing”. In her letter, the Barranquillera singer points out something we already suspected, but we had not confirmed: the big brands are made in China. “I shoot my Chanel bag from the Chinese neighborhood,” he sings. Is this a sample of humility or pure chance?

Shakira has no need to demonstrate prestige to the world using luxury brands, because she herself is a great signature: it is for what she does, not for what she is wearing. Similarly, China demonstrates that it will be the next great power not to sell luxury brands, but for its advances in manufacturing and technological industries.

Many people are defined according to the brands they use and the more expensive, the more prestige before society. It is not that it is wrong, except when that prestige becomes an excuse to feel superior. Then, the news bombs about China and the manufacture of the big brands, surely they have not liked them, noting that the prestige obtained by the money invested has been nothing more than a scam.

Great luxury firms such as Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Prada, Gucci, have appeared in viral videos published in Tiktok and X. In these, Chinese entrepreneurs who work in the manufacturing industry come out explaining that western luxury brands are manufactured in their country. Thus they benefit from the experience of local workers and get great margins with the resale of their products. They also claim that about 60 percent of their products maquila in China, whether finished for sale to the public or intermediate manufacturing to move on to a final process in Europe.

Other videos, in which the tariffs of 145 percent imposed on China by the president of the United States, Donald Trump are mentioned directly, appeal online buyers to support Chinese factories and buy directly on them. Silent rebellion or public revenge of manufacturers that show their real prices, for example, a Hermès bag that is sold by up to $ 38,000, it actually costs $ 1,250 to manufacture it. “I no longer buy in high costs, compover directly,” seems to be the response to Trump’s arrogance, they believe some netizens.

All this began thanks to the need for capitalism to produce more in less time, so this manufacturing work in China is carried out through the well -known maquilas or Chinese manufacturing factories, which are companies that make products for foreign companies, instead of selling them under their own brand.

Factories that once had a bad reputation for the alleged exploitation of their workers, currently do not differ so much in the degree of “slavery.” Precariousness is not exclusive to Chinese Maquilas workers, just look at the conditions of European warehouse workers at Amazon, for example, and immigrant workers in the United States.