Whom you don't help if you buy stuff from China
Yourself
If you buy cheap stuff from china, this means that the big companies will
realize that it's cheaper to produce stuff in China, so while it's cheaper
for you to buy whatever you do buy in that very moment, it might turn
out to be a bad idea afterwards, for several reasons:
a) the big companies have less reason to produce stuff in your country,
which increases the unemployment rate in your country and increases
poverty.
b) it puts pressure on other companies to reduce prices, which means that
either they're going to produce in China, too, or they are going bankrupt.
The chinese workers
If you buy cheap stuff from china, this puts more pressure on the companies
to produce their stuff even cheaper in order to sell it for even less than
the concurrence, who produces in China as well. The current situation in
China is that the workers are paid even less than the allowed minimum
granted by the chinese national law. They get a bit more than EUR 1'000.-
- per year. This is mostly for working 9.5 hours a day and more,
while not really having any rights. Because there are so many people living
in China, there's no reason for the employers to grant any rights to the
people, such as dismissal protection or minimal payments (or even less than
minimal), because if the employees demand such a thing, there's no reason
not to get them fired, you'll always find a whole busload of new workers.
So what would actually happen is that the situation for the chinese workers
gets worse and worse if you support the current strategy of the big
companies.
The chinese fabric owners
Most of the fabrics that produce goods for exporting from China now only work well because of the continuing hausse. However, everyone learns in economical education that every hausse is followed by a baisse, which means the demand for goods drops a lot for a longer period of time. Most of the chinese fabrics are not at all prepared for a baisse, and will likely disappear.
The chinese government
The current growth of the chinese economy is around 9%, which is incredibly
high and would cause a bunch of problems after a few years in a well-evolved
country like Germany, because you can hardly keep up with the growing
requirements in technical and infrastructural improvements, environmental
protection, etc. Imagine for example a person that grows taller by only
a few centimeters a year, but gains 9% of his weight every year - it's
not going to work out for a very long time. There is an increasing problem
with the environment, on many days the visibility range is reduced to a few
kilometers or even less by smog. The roads are used far beyond their
capabilities, you get traffic jams and the roads start to crumble apart.
Also, because there are so many workers, there's no way the chinese
government can verify that the chinese law is respected, that's why it
isn't. It has even been confirmed that the workers are instructed to lie
at the people that come from the company that operates the fabrics in order
to check on humanitary standards.
The biggest problem right now for the chinese national bank is that there
are a lot of «foul credits» from chinese people where it's clear
that they'll never be able to pay back the money. In the meanwhile, the
national debt is growing, which is only good for the US government, because
without China taking lots of credits the system would collapse immediately.
The companies
The companies get a lot more money from producing in China right now, however, since all this money disappears from the economical circles of the «rich countries», the markets they're selling to are breaking away slowly. However, their shareholders force them to continue the strategy because it results in higher short-term return rates. Shareholders tend not to care about long-term policies.
Whom you do help
The shareholders
Today, the most shareholders are only interested in maximization of shareholder value on the short term, which means firing instead of hiring, minimizing production cost and maximizing prices. There's no interest in keeping the company alive on the long term, because if you're at the end of their capability to raise the shareholder value, the shareholders simply sell their shares and buy another company's shares, in order to repeat the same principle.
Your local conservative party
Conservative party members tend to be paid by the shareholders and big companies to improve the law - in their sense. So if they make it easier and cheaper for the companies to do the China trick, they get higher donations, that means, more money.
Conclusions
The conclusions are pretty much up to you; do you want to support the shareholders and the conservative party, to the disadvantage of the workers, the companies, the fabric owners, the chinese government, and even yourself? Is that in your interest? If so, you can well continue to buy your «Made in China» products. If not, you should consider what you're just about to do. Sure, the local products are a lot more expensive than the imported ones. But is that price difference that will save you a little money on the short term worth hurting so many people, including yourself?