[krapp]

>Western governments were willing to give up their manufacturers sectors, or at least large parts of them, to maintain better environmental/labour laws than China.

Their motivation wasn't the maintenance of better environmental and labor laws, but higher profits from exploiting China's more business friendly (less regulation, fewer labor rights) environment. Had it been economically and politically viable for Western governments to domestically enact the same environmental and labor standards as China, they would have done so. And as soon as the quality of life in China improved enough that labor there was no longer economically viable, many companies moved their outsourcing elsewhere, such as to Vietnam or Africa.