How do you know if something is made in China?

So you’ve decided for all the right reasons that you’d prefer not to buy things which are made in China. But how do you tell if something was made in China?

If you’re buying in a physical store it can be quite easy, simply look at underside of the packaging, or on the labels and it will usually tell you where it was manufactured.

However if you’re buying online, it can be much harder. Even well known and trusted brands continue to manufacture in China however now as more pressure mounts, many firms are turning away and instead producing in their home countries, or in other, better locations.

  1. The first place to look when buying online is the brand name. Is it a Chinese brand like Huawei, or are you buying from a site like Alibaba or is it a service provider like Baidu? If so then you can almost certainly bet that whatever you are purchasing is either made in China or is directly supporting the Chinese state.
  2. The second place to look when buying online is in the shipping location. This is easiest on sites such as Ebay where it can be clearly visible. But this can be harder on sites such as Amazon which often do not provide detailed information and many have suggested are actively trying to hide where products come from.
  3. The third place to look is in the product description, this can be quite difficult online as more often than not it is not displayed, and only when the product arrives do you find out by looking on the box, that it was unfortunately made in China. However, to save you as much time as possible we’ve put together lists of products which we have check and are not made in China.
  4. Finally you can always ask the retailer where the product is made. In fact the more that we do this, the better because it will show to retailers that this information is important.

Obviously, finding products which are not made in China can be a bit of hard work which is why we have made lists ready for you to pick and choose!