The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade. New Preface and Epilogue with Updates on Economic Issues and Main Characters, 2nd Edition

5Cotton Comes to China

Nelson Reinsch's cotton leaves the Compress in Lubbock and turns left toward China. Usually by truck, but sometimes by train, the cotton heads through the blank space of west Texas, New Mexico, and Nevada, stopping finally at the Pacific Ocean in Long Beach, California. The cotton boards a ship and keeps going west, arriving a few days later at the port in Shanghai, and into the deafening pulse of China's weird new capitalism. Here, the Reinsch cotton is spun into yarn, knitted into cloth, cut into pieces, and finally sewn into a T-shirt. A ‘‘Made in China'’ label will be tacked to the collar. Thus transformed, the Texas cotton will return to America.¹

Nelson and Ruth's son, Lamar, thinks it is funny that he never thought about the Reinsch cotton actually going to China. In fact, even as a professor in a business school, Lamar's cotton consciousness ended at the gin in Shallowater. He never thought about what happened next, where the cotton went, or how it got there. But there is a low buzz about China in Lamar's childhood memories. At the gin, or at church, or at the dinner table, China was one of the things grownups talked about, one of the topics that would make his parents sigh and shake their heads. To a child, the China conversations were like the weather conversations, or the cotton price conversations. China, cotton prices, weather: the wildcards in the life of a Texas cotton farmer. Lamar remembers only that China mattered.

China matters even ...