Wasn't that the whole idea - for them to stop producing and polluting the planet? That giving them food would be cheaper. Of course it would threaten our dependence on cheap clothes and expensive gadgets.

It's not a socially stable option. Not because we want cheap gadgets, but because of the social imbalance.

Also from an ethical point of view, it's not very fair to deny them the chance to become a developed nation.

People don't sit around on their bums for too long - it's just not in our nature. If they weren't slaving away in factories they might end up as a society that primarily produces cultural capital (huge social stability there) or they might develop a service-based economy. In the wider scheme, Chinese manufacturing is probably more important to the west than China.

How important Chinese manufacturing is to China has little to do with the ramifications of perennially feeding a country for nothing.

> It's an observed phenomenon in Africa.

Here I was expecting.. "in the western world" ;D