According to Mr. Chiu's introduction, the Fair Trade movement is a global social movement against the inequality and poverty brought by globalization. We used to think globalization a good thing, but indeed it has its dark side: Due to unequal development of countries, many developing countries have to maintain their economic development by providing cheap labour and natural resources for the Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in developed countries. Due to their obvious incomparable bargaining power, farmers and labourers are always poorly paid.

Mr. Chiu explained that the Fair Trade movement thus has, broadly speaking, three folds: 1) to help organize farmers or workers in developing countries to form co-operatives or trade union, so as to enhance their collective bargaining power; 2) to help them line up with product outlets in developed countries directly so as to provide them with more choices, instead of depending solely on selling products to MNCs; 3) to promote the idea of fair trade among consumers, so that they can consider buying more fair trade products rather than products from MNCs, as well as putting pressure to MNCs so that they can be forced to trade more fairly. Every individual or enterprise or association that contributes in any one of the three can be said a participant in the Fair Trade movement. Thus we as consumers can contribute to making the world fairer, by helping to promote fair trade ideas and consume in a fair way.

Another speaker, Mr. Chow, admitted that it is not an easy task, even on the consumers' part. Since those un-fair trades still prevail, sometimes we have to concede to buy unfair products even if we commit to the fair trade ideas. He introduced an idea suggested by an American sociologist Erik O Wright' book Envisioning Real Utopia: the idea of 'interstitial transformation'. Even if we cannot but compromise, we can change our life, as well as others' life, bit by bit and step by step. The social structure itself would not change dramatically, but we can change it by our every choice and action, no matter how little, bit by bit. In real action we may need to compromise, but the point is, we are clear about what we believe and commit to change as much as we can.

Nearly 40 students from and outside the College joined the salon. The discussions following the speakers' sharing were active and lasted until ten o'clock that night. The purpose of the Like Reading Room Salon is exactly to engage our College and University community to exchange ideas, and to reflect on our life and our society. In the coming months there will be two more salons for you to take part in:
3/6/2013 - 'The Coming Insurrection' by the Invisible Committee - Speaker: Mei Ling YOUNG
3/13/2013 - Ghetto Community - Speaker: Olivia Tianyue GUAN