Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China | Hacker News Reader

Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China

washingtonpost.com

398 pointsmzs727 comments

As long as companies Apple are not legally responsible for their supply chain in front of developed countries’ courts nothing will change. In Switzerland a law that would have changed this was recently rejected. Hopefully another country makes the first step.

I’d really be curious to see how far we could push this.

Cobalt is an essential part of lithium-ion batteries. 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, much of it in forced conditions.

So I guess we have three options: go without lithium-ion batteries, enforce a minimum standard of labor conditions in the DRC by any means necessary, or just try not to think about it too much. Is it any wonder that we picked door number 3?

A downstream issue with importing the product of forced labor into the US is that US manufacturing markets, business (small & medium in particular), labor, & markets affected by finance are distorted. The argument that an influx of cheap foreign goods & cheap labor costs are good for the economy does not properly consider the long term & strategic costs of hollowing out large markets where the USA once lead the world as well as the poverty/blight incurred by former middle-class communities.

I grew up in Hawaii, which used to have a large sugar cane industry. I found it strange that the sugar cane was shipped to the mainland, to be processed, then packaged, shipped back, & sold to the consumer in Hawaii. The value added was effectively removed the local market, which created a monopoly for H,C,&S to buy land, have authority over water rights, allowing them to break treaties & promises to the citizens of the islands. There were also celebrated things that occurred due to the sugar industry, such as importing many people of different ethnicities to work in the plantations.

Today, Hawaii has highly prized land, which is expensive, & many families living there for generations who do not make much money. With few employable industries (government & tourism being the largest employers), the economy is vulnerable to Black Swan events, such as the Covid lockdowns.

It's a shame that a country as rich as Switzerland is unwilling to do that first step. I think that would have been a good way to start making corporations take responsibility.

The USA still allows prison slave labor, so good luck with that.

Examples: [1]

    Whole Foods – This organic supermarket buys artisan cheeses and fishes from companies that employ inmates.

    McDonald’s – Certain McDonald store items such as cutlery and containers were made in prison. Prisoners also sew their employee uniforms, and they only make a few cents an hour from it.

    Target – Since the early 2000s, Target has relied on suppliers that are known to use prison labor.

    IBM – Apparently, inmates from Lockhart Prison in Texas manufacture this tech giant’s circuit boards.

    Texas Instruments – Like IBM, their circuit boards are also made by prisoners. They even got a new factory assembly room specially made for inmate laborers.

    Boeing – A subcontractor of Boeing was found to have used inmates to cut airplane components. Unsurprisingly, the prisoners only get paid less than a quarter of the usual wage for such type of work.

    Nordstrom – The company was once under fire for selling jeans made by inmates. They have since stopped the practice though, and have promised not to use involuntary labor of any kind again.

    Intel – Like other tech giants in this list, Intel has also outsourced labor from prison. Some of their computer parts were made in a prison manufacturing facility.

    Walmart – Despite pledging not to sell products made by prisoners, some of the retail giant’s subcontractors were using prison labor to dispose of customer returns and excess inventory.

    Victoria’s Secret – The top American underwear designer was paying inmates peanuts to make their expensive lingerie.
    AT&T – Rather than outsource their call centers to other English-speaking countries, AT&T hired prisoners instead. The problem is, they only receive $2 an hour for a job that usually pays $15.

    British Petroleum (BP) – In 2010, BP hired Louisiana inmates to clean up an oil spill. They received no payment from it.

    Starbucks – We all know that Starbucks employees make little hourly. But the prisoners who make the packaged coffee sold in their stores make even much less money. They only receive as little as 23 cents an hour.

    Microsoft – In the 1990s, Microsoft made a conscious decision to hire prisoners to pack their software and mouse. A spokesperson at that time even claimed that the company sees nothing wrong about it.

    Honda Motor Company – The Japanese car company hires inmates from Ohio Mansfield Correctional Institution to make some of its car parts. As expected, the company paid them next to nothing.

    Macy’s – Like Walmart and Target, this retail giant also uses prison labor to save on its operating costs.

    Sprint – Following the footsteps of its competitor, AT&T, Sprint also staffs its call centers with underpaid inmates.

    Nintendo – To pack their Game Boys, Nintendo hired a subcontractor who, in turn, hires prisoners at deplorable rates.

    JC Penney – Since the 90s, JC Penney has used prison labor for its clothing line. Female inmates used to sew leisurewear sold in their stores, and more recently, prisoners from Tennessee are making jeans for them.

    Wendy’s – As part of its cost-cutting measures, Wendy’s uses prison labor to process beef for their hamburgers.

[1] https://blog.globaltel.com/companies-use-prison-labor/

Recently, Apple's supplier, Wistron faced revolt after treating workers unfairly here in India. And India is not really the most shining example of protecting our workers from unfair and harsh working conditions. So, if such treatments don't fly here, I don't think they will fly anywhere else. The kind of labor expectation that these companies have after their stints in China is ethically incompatible with most other countries. So, I can't see the condition improving in the near future, companies will continue chasing profits at all cost and China will remain the most fertile ground to do that.

Note that immediately after this become public, Apple put Wistron on probation refusing to award them any more work and requiring them to resolve the issues.

Governments really need to do the heavy lifting though because apart from refusing to hand over money/work they are very limited in what they can do.

I respectfully disagree. The only heavy lifting that governments need is to hold Apple and their executives criminally responsible. Apple has shown ruthless effectiveness in tracking down leakers and prosecuting them. But making sure the workers who are making their parts and assembling their devices aren't slaves or being abused is a bridge too far for the richest company in the world?

I don't believe it. It's Apple's responsibility, and if achieving such a goal in some backwater is too difficult then maybe it shouldn't have been doing business there in the first place.

They do publish an annual Supplier Responsibility Report. It's been a while since I read it, but they've definitely found and punished misbehaving suppliers.

I think I remember one instance where underage workers were discovered and Apple forced the supplier to finance their higher education. In another they found a false wall had been installed in a factory to conceal hazardously stored chemicals and, again if memory serves, immediately terminated the supplier's contract.

https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/

According to HN search this is the only comment in over 600 that mentions this page. Beyond the marketing text, the PDFs at the bottom cover thousands of pages of supplier guidelines, government filings, lists of suppliers, audit results, etc.

Take with as large a grain of salt as you'd like, but at least it is a primary source on the topic. Apple naturally will be tightlipped during their investigation of these incidents, but I'm curious how they will be covered in their subsequent publications.

> hold Apple and their executives criminally responsible

What crime was committed?

Hmm, I was not putting the blame on Apple here, rather Wistron. While indirectly, Apple may be responsible for Wistron's behavior, most of the fault lies with Wistron and how they are used to treat their employees as disposable, while chasing higher margins.

> Note that immediately after this become public, Apple put Wistron on probation refusing to award them any more work and requiring them to resolve the issues.

Apple is currently incentivized to stay naive about the labor conditions of their manufacturing partners. As long as they can maintain ignorance, it's difficult to hold them accountable. We should demand better from a company as massive and profitable as Apple.

> immediately after this become public, Apple put Wistron on probation

That's far too late and at that point they had no choice. They deserve no credit for doing it.

They deserve credit for changing behavior, but their policy should be proactive not reactive. This ought to be embedded into their branding such that they profit from their stance on human rights while also making it a desirable marketing point for competitors. (And surely they can afford to)

Traditionally slavery was an alternative to death for the conquered. I'm morbidly curious what the effects of all Western corporations banning slave labor would be. I doubt it would result in liberation. Would working conditions for the slaves worsen when they worked for local, lower-margin factories instead? I can't imagine them improving.

I have little faith in legal remedies to liberate slaves. Arming them seems the only long-term effective solution. Otherwise the man with the gun will order the slave back to work the second the man in the wig isn't looking. And the man in the wig will remain silent, to avoid revealing his impotence.

Slave labor is inefficient, so perhaps the best way is to topple inefficient slave societies through full-spectrum competition, from military to economic. This pressure incentivizes efficient human resource utilization.

One thing's for sure: Individual Westerner guilt over whether to buy the next iPhone will add zero value.

Having spent several years in Chinese supply chain activities, the factories building iPhones, XBoxes etc. Are some of the nicest ones around. Clean, large campuses with organized activities for workers etc.

There are several tiers of factories below that, with worse worker accommodations, Longer working hours, worse working conditions. Some of the smaller, poorer factories will provide little in terms of personal protective equipment, ergonomics, and make stuff for the local, African and South Asian markets where there’s little pressure on companies to have a “clean” supply chain. These workers would go there.

That sounds to me like "if we don't let our suppliers use child labor, those children's families will starve" argumentation.

We in the west are complicit in the use of child and slave labor when we buy products produced in this manner, but because it happens on the other side of the globe and is cheaper that way, we turn a blind eye.

The solution is not to ignore the issue. The solution is to draw a line in the sand and say "this is unacceptable, clean up your act or no deal", and for that to be backed by international trade agreements. It is up to us, as the lucrative market they wish to sell to, to make these demands.

Full transparency and accountability in all supply lines is a must. It should not be possible to hide behind "a supplier did this, we're not responsible".

I hope we'll see a move to more local production, instead of shipping stuff around the globe like crazy. It makes no sense for me in Europe to have my clothes produced in Asia, when we have world-class textile and garment production right here, with better environmental control and worker's rights.

Nice to have theory confirmed by experience.

> perhaps the best way is to topple inefficient slave societies through full-spectrum competition, from military to economic. This pressure incentivizes efficient human resource utilization.

Isn’t that what’s already happening though? One might even say that this neoliberalist take is precisely what brought about the current situation. For producers in the market to be competitive, they must (over)optimize for profit. One of the best ways to do that is by reducing cost. One of the best ways to reduce cost is by employing cheaper labor (“efficient human resource utilization”, you said), and to do that, tech companies must outsource to manufacturers located in poor countries with weak state institutions where the transacting parties can get away with slavery.

In short, exploitation is a natural consequence of capitalism and the "infinite growth for shareholders" model.

Wouldn’t a UBI effectively lower costs of labor and undermine the circumstances of forced work? It’d be a UBI in the developed region and not in the foreign country.

Humans envy wealth not justified by the generous hunter archetype, who shares his kill's meat with the tribe. Humans also lust to devour chips and candy until their teeth rot and their hearts explode. A three-pound brain comes with legacy firmware. Vulnerabilities should be patched in the next 10,000-year release. Please hold.

Tribal politics are mediated by emotion, settled by sex and violence, and recorded in genes. Unfelt but underlying is the telos of life: to accelerate the heat death of the universe and achieve a more perfectly-uniform field of lifeless subatomic dust. Inspiring! If God is the universe, then life is the cancer She dies of.

So if you really hate God, become Elon Musk and advance humanity along the Kardashev Scale. Which brings us to what international pressure really is: the race up the Kardashev ladder. Those left behind enjoy a century of humiliation, as China discovered when the European nations forcibly opened her ports for business in classically-rapey colonial fashion. If forcible anachronism is a form of societal slavery, then this was a liberation of the Chinese peasant, who now owns a cell phone and several outfits.

Later Mao attempted his Great Leap Forward, but gave up on it before meeting the fate of Pol Pot, whose supreme ideological commitment weakened Cambodia so badly that Vietnam invaded. Thus the threat of invasion checks the degree of enslavement feasible. Of course, it rarely comes to that. Even Communists can be reasonable.

> Isn’t that what’s already happening though?

China should be enjoying her Asian tiger rise in per capita GDP, and filling the vacuum left by the USA's receding thalassocracy. However, it's always possible to overplay a good hand, and it appears Xi did exactly that. If he's replaced by moderate after Deng's heart, it will be partly due to the pressure Trump put on China, in a reversal of the USA's prior indulgence. Not that Trump is doing much on an absolute scale, but relatively, it's a dramatic shift. Mostly though, it's China's own fault. Burning all her international goodwill to hoard COVID19 PPE will prove very expensive, among other shenanigans.

Just because I make a factual historical observation, doesn't make me a neoliberal. Slave societies are an extreme case. I doubt China could be described as one at her current levels of forced labor.

> For producers in the market to be competitive, they must (over)optimize for profit. One of the best ways to do that is by reducing cost. One of the best ways to reduce cost is by employing cheaper labor (“efficient human resource utilization”, you said), and to do that, tech companies must outsource to manufacturers located in poor countries with weak state institutions where the transacting parties can get away with slavery.

Here's where you're right: Tribal politics represent the genetic feedback system, and they dislike arbitrary wealth because of its damaging distortion of genetic fitness feedback. The market economy makes wealth a much less arbitrary signal of genetic fitness, but it is nowhere near a replacement for tribal politics. Unless you think Bill Gates should get all the California girls...

That's why successful societies balance the interests of the rich against the interests of the commoners.

However, I wouldn't call China a "poor country with weak state institutions". If their slaves are outcompeting our free skilled tech workers, there's a simple solution for that: Slap a tariff on it. This move will garner enough popularity to guarantee a crowd of adoring iPhone assembly technicians in front of the golden statue of yourself you erect with the proceeds.

> One thing's for sure: Individual Westerner guilt over whether to buy the next iPhone will add zero value.

What, specifically, do you mean by this?

Cedant arma togae: the man in the wig is not powerless. The man in the wig simply doesn't care about slaves. The man in the wig does, however, care about the opinions of the electorate (in a democracy), and so Westerner guilt may actually be useful.

Wow. A troglodyte on HN manages to get top votes by vomiting an incredibly incoherent spew of libertarianism, marxism, reactionary nationalism and militant western chauvinism. All of this in reaction to an article about slave labor going into every fanboy's favorite screen. Who woulda thunk it.

A lot of things you say are right: If Western civ actually held to its neoliberal values then things would cost more. Slave labor is inefficient (although it's more efficient and apparently more acceptable than executing people like they did during the Cultural Revolution).

But on what planet do you live where the only solution is armed violence? First of all, that's just not possible. Even in America, the idea that because we have guns we are able to stand up against oppressive government is nothing more than a wet dream fantasy of the far right. In China? Uighurs are going to arm up and stand to the CCP? Are you out of your mind? If that looked like anything, it would look like Islamic terrorism.

You and I in America, and the people in Hong Kong, and the Uighurs, are not in a "slave society", we are in a corporation. And our issues are not going to be cured by taking up small arms against nuclear states that act as part of that corporations, even if millions of us are armed. The only thing going on here is a battle for scarce resources, disguised as a bunch of ideologies.

Look, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have trillions of dollars they could spend to build up a Palestinian state rebuild Syria or help the Uighurs, but what do they do? Make arms deals with Israel and America and China. And logically they're doing what they need to do. There is no world in which your fantasy of small arms and liberation of slaves is a remote possibility.

The only possibility is people owning their own local resources. And not sharing them as marxists, either.

There are very few, if any, levers that we can pull from the West at this point to promulgate that strategy. We can't bomb the railway lines into the Uighur camps, as we should have in WWII, because it would cause a nuclear war. We can cut off trade, and encourage people not to trade with bad actors, that's about it. Everything else is just a wanker fantasy.

Doing good starts from home. Arm your prison labor and minimum wage workers. Let us know how that goes..

I didn't say arming slaves was good. I said it was the only effective long-term solution to the problem of liberating slaves. The consensus here is anti-slavery, so I accepted that premise.

The USA does permit minimum wage workers to purchase cheap pistols, which is probably why its police aren't brave enough to lock them down. Sometimes those workers even upset a predetermined election.

I do not support prisons. On average, it is better to be the slave of an individual and work for him than it is to be the slave of a state and live in a cage full of predators. Although of course I would rather be imprisoned for life in modern Scandinavia than serve 10 years of "indentured servitude" in Plantation America.

Since doing good starts from home, I suggest you liberate your extended family's children from compulsory labor. Let us know how that goes...

I'm not Chinese.. sorry if I was too rude... Agree that slavery is just hidden now and called by a different name.. it's sad, America with it's literally unlimited resources can do much better for it's own citizens, but it's too divided on class and uses race problems to divert attention from the real problem that the lower classes are screwed over in every possible way.. I think if the politicians there were a little less corrupt it would have been so much more nicer for regular folk..

Doing time in Scandinavia amounts to living for free in a socialist utopia. You call working in the US "indentured servitude"? Really? If so, it's a very nice kind of slavery, where lots of us can buy houses and many idiots have the time to stand in line for a PS5. If you took away the societal whim to buy the latest shoes / rims / playstations (which I think is temporary and only based on cheap credit) then you have a massively productive economy and still one of the highest living standards in the world. In spite of the obvious inequalities. The answer isn't to tear down the system, it's to get better education to more people so they stop trying to tear down the system, and start trying to make the system work better for them.

I’ve decided to leave the Apple ecosystem in 2021. But the problem is not isolated to Apple. In fact, I’d be surprised if other, cheaper products aren’t quite a bit worse.

Is there an electronics company that does a better job? (That’s not a rhetorical question.)

Even if a phone is made 100% in US or Europe, the raw materials for it like Cobalt is probably not immune to other types of human rights abuse: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/a...

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/oct/12/p...

Sadly true. Years ago, I watched a brutal documentary on a mine where the life expectancy of the workers was insanely short. Their primary industrial clients were electronics manufacturers. I don’t know what I can do, though, as programming is my living.

I like the suggestion of always buying used goods. But obviously, a secondary market still encourages the primary market. It’s not a perfect solution.

Just take care of what you own and don’t needlessly buy additional electronics.

Apple is one of the better ones in a sea of really bad. It's a low bar and certainly doesn't mean Apple is perfect. There might be some boutique phone makers who claim to be better like Librem or Fairphone, but because they have fewer resources than the big players it's much harder for them to really know.

And if you dig into the mining side of the rare earths, worker conditions drop quickly.

This is the big problem. Few of these companies have the resources to verify their supply chain is free of abuse. The smaller companies likely have even less control over their supply chain.

And supply chains aren’t necessarily constants. They can flip overnight when some distant vendor lights the contract on fire after the audit is complete by switching to a cheaper source, pocketing the difference. The most newsworthy instances often involve steel and catastrophic failure. People in this comment section saying that Apple executives should be held criminally liable have a very naive understanding of how long the tentacles of the supply chain go for anything made with more than a few raw materials.

I believe, a good guess, this company is forced to take these laborers.

The CCP calls the shots and if you own the company you have to go along or become one of the prisoners.

The CCP even has the forced laborers in a parade. They have their hands on it from start to finish.

One way to punish them is to simply buy less. Upgrading electronics is usually superfluous.

Fairphone is your best bet with smartphones, but I'm not sure if there's similarly ethically produced hardware of other types.

Fairphone have dozens of suppliers in China, some of them indirect, and they say in their own literature they can't directly vouch for every company in their supply chain.

They're in exactly the same boat as Apple. IMHO this is about China, not any one company.

Lack of perfection does not mean you should give up everything.

Fairphone is also about being fair to its user, e.g. with available spare parts.

How’s the privacy on a fairphone? The same as regular android?

You can buy Fairphone without any Google stuff: https://esolutions.shop/shop/e-os-fairphone-3/.

They ship regular Android, with bootloader locked, although they provide instructions on how to unlock.

There is also Librem 5 USA, but it's $2k: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa/.

It’s not really made in the US is more that they inspect the parts and clip them together in the US and that costs them $1000 for some reason.

Did you read the link? It's manufactured in the US. The other version of Librem 5 which is made in China and assembled in US costs $800: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5.

Honestly i never felt the ecosystem to be that great, its just the same shit others are doing in a walled garden way. I am sure you will be fine finding your own stack

Would you consider only buying a used/refurbished phone/computer? Obviously it’s not scalable to the masses, but not putting any money in Apple’s pocket directly

I only buy used phones. But I rarely buy used computers / monitors. Those are my bread and butter, so reliability matters.

Yea understandable, I’ve had great experiences with refurbished MacBooks for what it’s worth

There’s the fairphone

https://www.fairphone.com/en/

The least harmful thing you can do is to only buy refurbished devices and to use them for as long as possible before replacing them.

You'll have to choose to get off the constant upgrade carousel.

I fault companies like Apple for doing business with companies who do these things.

But I'm not sure if anything changes if local governments aren't interested in stopping it (or actually support it) either.

Markets don't care about human rights... and if the local government supports this (in this case China, but other places too). I don't see how this ever changes.

It changes by holding companies like Apple accountable. They are the largest company in the world for goodness sake. Their audits when so little as a picture of a manual gets leaked are incredibly thorough, yet when it comes to literal slavery they're unable to reign it in? If we were to hold executives liable for acting as slavers then it would be miraculous how quickly corporate leadership would suddenly be interested in the well being of their fellow man.

I think there's always some manufacturer willing to do this thing with any product, even with Apple and just continue on.

We talk about slavery, that ended with state actions. I'm not sure China cares, and accordingly the practice will continue.

We have to pull manufacturing out of China until something changes, then. Each and every one of us is indirectly contributing to slavery until then.

> We talk about slavery, that ended with state actions. I'm not sure China cares, and accordingly the practice will continue.

You're correct, but there's another angle to this than ending the practice: moral complicity.

An individual in the antebellum south couldn't reasonably end the institution of slavery in the US, but he could have taken actions that affected the degree he was personally complicit. If he owned and profited from slavery, he was clearly complicit. If he did but had a change of heart and manumitted them, he's far less so. If he became an abolitionist and did his best to avoid supporting slaveholders or the products of slavery, he's hardly complicit at all.

If Apple chooses to deal with companies that use forced labor (or chooses to look the other way), it's complicit, and that means it's customers are too (to a lesser degree).

Right, I'm not disputing that there will always be someone horrible willing to do that. What I'm saying is that large American companies and their executives should be held legally responsible if that gets into their supply chain.

If a Sword of Damocles is hovering continuously above their head in the form of criminal punishment then they would have no choice but to think twice about off shoring to a region where it is "conveniently" difficult to enforce basic labor rights. My point is that purposeful ignorance as a defense is unacceptable.

What I don’t understand is why companies want to be associated with these suppliers. Honestly the cost difference can’t be that big.

Also why isn’t it news? It feels like something that should have journalists camping outside Tim Cooks office.

While I question his motives, it’s kinda weird that Trump of all people seems to be the only one who is openly critical of China.

> What I don’t understand is why companies want to be associated with these suppliers. Honestly the cost difference can’t be that big.

because ultimately the great majority of their customers do not care, as simple as that. They might care about local issues, wedge issues, but ethical and moral concerns in another country? not so much. Big luxury brands such as Apple pour billions in PR and marketing because they live or die by the reputation. The day their customers start caring more about it, things might change.

I just want to add, that I'm no way trying to diminish Apple's achievements when it comes to technology, product integration and creating remarkable ecosystems. I cannot think of another manufacturer that nailed that much in so little time. I think that Apple Silicon is game changer. But yes, they are a luxury brand.

I think even more than that they simply do not have a choice. Yes, it sucks that Apple's suppliers are unethical, but what am I supposed to do if I want to Snapchat my girlfriend or talk to my friends, or have a phone that is compatible with itunes/apple music? If my choice is between Apple and Google, how do I know that Google's ethics are any better? Am I supposed to spend hours and hours of my life investigating whether one is marginally more ethical than the other?

We simply have to stop making consumers responsible and accountable for every unethical thing a company does. Why is the status quo that every company is evil and that's ok? You'll see AMEX commercials imploring you to "shop local" during the pandemic but where is their relief for small business? Why is it my responsibility to save them but business as usual for those that want to exploit me?

> because ultimately the great majority of their customers do not care, as simple as that. They might care about local issues, wedge issues, but ethical and moral concerns in another country? not so much. Big luxury brands such as Apple pour billions in PR and marketing because they live or die by the reputation. The day their customers start caring more about it, things might change.

It's worth noting that one of the main reasons consumers "don't care" is the market is structured in a way to literally numb them to these issues. It makes it difficult to even learn about these issues (in relation to particular products), have that knowledge when making a purchasing decision, and take action against it (all competitors may be doing the same thing). The PR you mentioned also plays a part.

To give an slightly different example: Xinjiang produces a lot of cotton, and, IIRC, some of it is produced through forced labor. How am I supposed to show I care by avoiding that cotton? I can't, because it's pretty much impossible for me to know if a particular shirt I'm buying is made from that cotton or not, and it might actually be impossible for anyone to know without a very expensive and time consuming investigation.

If Apple put up big signs in it's stores saying "iPhones are made with forced labor," with compelling product storytelling about the forced labor practices involved, I think you'd Apple's sales drop as consumers show they do care. But that's not going to happen, all the market incentives are to obscure that kind of information.

Cost is part of it, but the other big piece is logistics. As we learned early in the year, Apple is moving manufacturing outside of China, but it takes time. Something like the iPhone is made in an industrial area where many of the part manufacturers are next to each other. This lets various parts be easily sourced and delivered. So when Apple wants to move to a new country, the end goal has to be to move the entire complex, and not just a piece. That takes time.

> While I question his motives, it’s kinda weird that Trump of all people seems to be the only one who is openly critical of China.

You fell into Trumps distortion field. Many are critical of China, but the difference is what to do about it. Trumps idea was to go it alone with tariffs, rhetoric, and go after things like TikTok. IMO, that's not a plan or a real policy.

If it were in the US you'd certainly see it in the news.

In China and other places just getting close to a factory can at times be difficult and crappy working conditions are sadly just assumed to be a fact :(

Trump's criticism of China I don't think intersects anywhere close to caring about the treatment of Chinese citizens... or anyone really.

Just a random anecdote, I'm American and work in the US. Trump personally approved the acquisition of a company I worked for and appeared with the CEO and talked about how all the great jobs that would come of it ... before the acquisition was official they laid most everyone off.

But Apple is in the US. What surprises me is that the US media isn’t pounding on Apple for using suppliers with force labor.

Sorry about the acquisition, if it had been a movie it would have been almost funny: This is great for job, btw you’re fired.

There's a Netflix documentary about the garlic industry where among other concerns journalists reveal that peeled garlic from China is the product of prison slave labor. Many of the prisoners work their hands raw and continue to cut garlic ends with their teeth. Prisoners have a daily quota with punishment for not meeting it.

I haven't come across peeled garlic that wasn't from China or was unlabeled. So, I stopped buying it entirely.

Thanks for the insight. Do you have a great reference?

https://www.ft.com/content/1416a056-833b-11e7-94e2-c5b903247... might be a reference.

Netflix show "Rotten", Season 1, Episode "Garlic Breath". It's been a hotly contested episode. I haven't seen any debate about the peeled garlic, though.

IMO this article launders slavery by referring to it as "forced labor".

I think the reason for saying forced labor was to distinguish it from chattel slavery (what most people think of when they see the word slavery), not downplaying the actions of this supplier.

The CCP has enslaved the Uighars, and gifted this manufacturer with some of them. How is this not chattel?

Guess a public boycott of iPhone/Apple is easy move to fight this mess. I don't wanna think about labors when touching my phone every time.

To the tune of Childish Gambinos "This is America": This is globalism

This was always the point of offloading to other countries. Less regulations, lower wages, less powerful workers and workers unions, and higher profit margins. Ross Perot was right but nobody listened to him. Apple isnt unique, and this isnt the first time. Its systemic.

So tired of the trope of accusing anybody critical of globalism of being an isolationist. Protectionism is a valid and needed (to a certain degree) approach for all nation states, ours included.

You seem to want to kill flies with nuclear weapons.

The vast majority of third world workers benefit from free trade and freely choose the jobs it produces.

Protectionism sentences people far poorer than you to far worse economic lives. Taking away Apple assembly jobs doesn’t increase third world wages or worker protections, it makes them worse. Those workers are consigned to work back in brutal rural jobs that not only pay less but are far more dangerous.

Globalism is how the third world living standards catch up.

> The vast majority of third world workers benefit from free trade and freely choose the jobs it produces.

Source? Especially for the second statement.

They don't benefit from free trade, free trade is the reason why they are exploited and their countries kept in poverty. And how can you say that they freely choose their jobs if the only alternative they have to ridicolous wages and low safety jobs is to starve?

Third world workers don’t have to work for first world manufacturers like Apple, they can keep doing the jobs they already have.

The reason they don’t is their existing jobs are far worse, typically far more difficult and dangerous farm jobs.That’s why when Foxconn used to post new iPhone assembly jobs, Chinese would line up by thousands because an Apple assembly job is a ticket out of poverty.

So if first world manufacturers left, your reducing third world workers choices back to the lower paying, much worse work they had before.

> Source? Especially for the second statement.

Too lazy to Google but India used protectionism because it wanted to do its own thing after independence and keep the evil western corporation away. By the end of 1980's India was almost bankrupt and had to get loans from IMF one of the condition was to open up the economy. India's poverty rate started to fall down after the economy opened up.

My countries government should understand the implications of the policies it impliments, including the impact on people in other countries, but my governments first concern shouldn't be those other peoples, it should be it's own citizens! For those who seriously try to understand this topic, the implication you aren't talking about (and a myriad more) is that due to this we can expect the first world standards/wealth to decrease in response. Of course there are those who then respond "good! about time!" or some equivalent, but I digress.

The mental gymanstics I see being performed in comments here boggles the mind, but I am thankful at least to have a refresher on all the kinds of responses I need to be prepared to rebute. Lets restate them as prereq for responding to them: (on globalism)

It increases the wealth of poor people in other countries

It offers more employment opportunities for said people

It increases the wealth of the third world in general

It's not globalism, it's the companies who participate in it and aren't heald accountable.

You had a "protectionist" president and how did that work out?

It's not globalisms fault, it's capitalisms fault.

Globalism as a term is a "racist dog whistle" and an "antisemitic conspiratorial buzzword"

So far, none of these are particularly well thought out or presented, and suffer obvious weaknesses. I'm not sure if I feel like taking the time currently to dissect them each right now, but they will go in the todo list.

> My countries government should understand the implications of the policies it impliments, including the impact on people in other countries, but my governments first concern shouldn't be those other peoples, it should be it's own citizens!

The people in other countries are human beings with exactly the same value and rights as I have. The responsible thing to do is to do both. Just like my responsibility is to both take care of my family and my community and the world, all at once. If I sacrifice one, I'm irresponsible and failing. I would be (and sometimes am) ashamed that my government fails at those responsibilities.

The parent assumes a zero-sum tradeoff, but that's not how trade, peace, and freedom work - they benefit everyone. Thankfully, I have great solutions internationally. Globalization and the democratic world order have been the most successful international policies by orders of magnitude. Name any point in history, any approach to international trade or international relations, that has yielded the success of the post-WWII era? Not only in economics, but in peace and freedom.

We need to do better. What better option do you offer, that will improve the lives of the next generation

Free trade increases the standard of living of all participants, including both the third and first world, so I’m having trouble understanding your point.

Go read up about comparative advantage to understand the true benefits of free trade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

Or ask yourself, if you were a lawyer billing $200 an hour for your services, and had a secretary costing you $20/hour doing your typing, would you fire them if you could type twice as fast as them? Would spending part of your work hours on less valuable work make you wealthier or poorer?

Even if it's systemic, you could at least try to do something about it if you're one of the big guys.

This is what I dislike most about Apple: they're trying to be a leader, but are not acting like one.

> This is what I dislike most about Apple: they're trying to be a leader, but are not acting like one.

Apple has done far more than any tech company to take ownership of their supply chain.

I wouldn't call that a good sign of leadership. That's more an act of shutting everyone else off from access to technology.

Instead, a good leader will help lift others. Take Microsoft Research. For a long time, they were a leader in scientific publications in CS, with many awards. Compare that to Apple, and imho any sign of "leadership" is completely non-existent in comparison.

> This is what I dislike most about Apple: they're trying to be a leader, but are not acting like one.

How is Apple trying to be a leader in anything besides profits?

Apple absolutely attempts to present itself as a morally/ethically superior company. See, for example, from just 7 months ago: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/31/apple-ceo-tim-cook-email-to-...

Or, re the environment, from Apple’s current website: https://www.apple.com/environment/

You can find all sorts of similar posturing on a number of topics from Apple.

I agree, but globalism has on the whole improved the human condition by a lot. The vast majority of people aren’t middle-class citizens of developed countries. Like everything, balance is key.

Indeed. Without the outsourcing, they would still be in those same conditions, but earning less. Now there is external money coming into their economy.

Instead of blaming globalism, maybe one should make companies responsible for their external effects? As in, lawfully responsible, to be tried as if they did it themselves. Like pollution, using other companies to do their unethical biddings etc (child or slave labor for instance).

How can you know that all of your suppliers comply to some rules?

Do you know all the saas you buy was not made by exploited people?

Why not just ban outsourcing to countries with poor labor laws? The commonly stated purpose of the U.S. outsourcing to China was to 1. help lift it out of poverty and 2. bring it democracy through capitalism.

Goal #1 has been largely achieved and Goal #2 has been an epic failure. The U.S. should completely phase out outsourcing to China over the next decade. This would drive a huge acceleration of automated manufacturing in the U.S. which is the future anyway.

Companies like Apple could move all manufacturing to the U.S. over a decade if they wanted to. They have the money and the technology. But they're currently addicted to cheap (and unethical) labor. They're unlikely quit on their own, as long as U.S. law enables their addiction.

Sounds like a great way to crush third world countries deeper into poverty. I love it!

It also spreads wealth. China lifted more people out of poverty than any nation in history, because of globalisation.

Are you saying poverty is less important than workers rights?

Economies develop. This is part of it. You’ve just had a “protectionist” President, US is worse off by almost every measure... as a counter example to your “protectionism is needed”

>You’ve just had a “protectionist” President, US is worse off by almost every measure... as a counter example to your “protectionism is needed”

That is not a counter-example to anything AFAICT. We didn't have a 'protectionist' President. We had an incompetent President, who faked to be a protectionist.

A real data point would be this:

https://imgur.com/a/q3GUEzc

The US had a decent economy when we had high import duties.

Real wages actually went up for Americans for the first time in 40 years during the last four years but yeah worse off...

Citation, with inflation adjustments. Please provide.

Why is the US passing stimulus packages if it’s going so well?

(To further my point was that growth a hang over from the globalist President? Or a result of the protectionist one? Did it continue throughout the 4 years? I already know the answer, but just pointing out the flaw in your point for you so you don’t need to find it)

> You’ve just had a “protectionist” President, US is worse off by almost every measure...

Could we get some citations to back this up? It seems too soon to even evaluate all of the effects of the (soon to be) previous administrations policies.

But as a discussion point, Trump moved to end the postal subsidies China enjoyed which made it cheaper for us to have something shipped from there than to buy locally. How does this hurt the US?

That’s a single policy. Perhaps that’s a good one?

Imagine a world where China and the U.S. were on better terms, start of the health crisis China helped provide huge amounts Of PPE required. Drs and epidemiologists from China with experience could have helped drs in the US. Instead they were coming off the back of a trade war over soy beans and hiding information from each other.

Globalisation has effects that expand beyond the economy.

As for citations: the US has just passed the second, largest stimulus package in its history beating or the first from a couple of months back. Are we’re ignoring this gorilla so much that people need citations?

Just so that we're on the same page, you're claiming that virtual slave prisoners are being lifted out of poverty through forced labor, correct?

That's a straw man. They're saying that hundreds of millions of Chinese people (and others around the world) have risen out of poverty because of globalism. You're only giving credit for the negative impacts of globalism, and in kind of a duplicitous manner.

I agree “forced work” or slavery should be stopped. But go and visit these factories in China... the people are their voluntarily... because their alternative is worse than those conditions.

Like I said economies develop, China should improve its workers rights laws, and slowly it has and will.

We should avoid and remove slavery. Agree.

But using developing countries as an example of why developed countries should be more protectionist at exactly the point in time where the US tried that and lost out on almost every front is insane and disconnected from reality

I don’t vote for a president to achieve global fairness. I vote for one who will make my life the best. If that’s not great for Chinese peasants that’s not the US President’s problem. China should develop its economy, but the US should not have allowed its corporations to have given China such a huge leg up in doing so.

I’m not convinced that voting for overall fairness (global, national, state, community) is opposed to making your life the best.

Those Chinese peasants will become the US problem (see the rise of China in the last 50 years).

Those Chinese corporations are what made “your life the best” with your cheap cars, electronics.

Your point sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it.

Isn't it just 1 parameter: cheaper? This kind of work is outsourcing anyway. So I think all the things you mention there have no impact, since it all wouldn't matter when the price would be the same.

I think “this is capitalism/liberalism” is a better way to call it out.

I am tired of the globalism/isolationism dichotomy that gets thrown around too, but there are good reasons to criticize attributing all of these problems to globalism. For one, “globalism” is commonly used as a racist dog whistle, and is a popular antisemitic conspiratorial buzzword. Second, calling out globalism as the root of the problem leaves out the fact that it’s capitalism that drives the need for globalism, not globalism existing just for the sake of globalism.

"Forced Labor" is an active form of "Slavery". "Detention" is a passive form of "Slavery".

So the choice at hand is Slavery vs, Slavery.

A note to the pedantic among us: I did not say "Chattel Slavery", "Modern Slavery", or any other modifiers. The Cambridge English dictionary defines slavery as "The activity of legally owning other people who are forced to work for or obey you" and "The condition of being legally owned by someone else and forced to work for or obey them".

I think we can safely say that this case applies, specifically because, in that country, this system of activity is "Legal".

This argument is at best equivocating. Being in prison is not the same thing as being a slave, and by suggesting that they are the same thing, you do more harm than good.

The existence of prisons are not going away, but we can do away with profiteering off of prison labor easily.

Well you can always fallback to certificated Vietnam slavery instead.

The US state is promoting these stories because they want Apple to reduce its dependency on China so they can more easily conduct their trade war.

It also occurs to me that targeting someone like Apple also makes smaller players rethink their operations too.

But it's not really something they can do (and the Trump administration knows this), so this is probably just routine Apple bashing while everyone else also uses China and probably cares a lot less about their supply chain as long as they get their product after ample QC.

To be fair. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/01/california-i...

Here are a few things Apple doesn’t take serious action on (that would be expected of a rich company) and/or completely ignores as if it’s not a problem:

* Human rights preservation in its supply chain

* Improving the repairability/serviceability of its products by third party entities so they can have longer useful lives

* True end-to-end encryption of all data on iCloud and its online services

All these are inter-related.

I hate how American (and European) companies will virtue signal with commercials and campaigns (Apple and Nike come to mind) toting their ESG credentials but then will be doing stuff like this. People fall for it and it really pisses me off. Welcome to marketing.

It’s also crazy to me that China isn’t facing more severe backlash for the treatment of the Uyghurs. It’s reprehensible and disgusting.

ESG == Environmental, Social and Corp Governance

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social_and_co...

>I hate how American (and European) companies will virtue signal with commercials and campaigns (Apple and Nike come to mind) toting their ESG credentials but then will be doing stuff like this

My favorite https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/034/229/Bethe...

Companies don't care though but consumers also have to realize they are not your friends either

What exactly did Apple do? The hired a contractor, and they just found out that contractor is using slave labor, so now they are investigating. The last time they found out a contractor was using slave labor, they severed the relationship.

I'm not sure what else you'd expect them to do exactly.

I would expect one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world that is always virtue signaling to have their supply chain 100% slave free. That is not a big ask.

The relationship between Apple and its suppliers is, ultimately, antagonistic. Apple wants to maximise units of work per dollar, their suppliers want to maximise dollars per unit of work. This creates an incentive for suppliers to cheat.

This makes the situation way, way more complex than “Apple needs to audit its supply chain”. While true, any such audit is going to be actively sabotaged by the suppliers. This will include actions like hiding workers, forcing them to lie, or moving them strategically between production lines to hide the truth.

I don’t mean to defend Apple here. I’m not sure what stops them creating their own businesses in China and Vietnam and elsewhere, where they directly hire the workers. Why does Apple outsource this stuff in the first place? Perhaps that’s the standard we should be holding them to.

It's a pretty big ask actually. They have 1000s of suppliers. I'm sure their vetting process is pretty thorough already, and then they act swiftly when they find out something was missed. Feel reasonable to me.

It's amazing how Apple is able to maintain and enforce such strict quality and secrecy amongst their suppliers, yet they seem to fail often when it comes to labor and human rights violations.

I don't think it's a coincidence. There's a clear lack of effort here, or at least not on par with their other ones.

Rather than people falling for it, they have pretty much the same incentives as the corporations. They like virtue signaling, when its costs are negligible and the externalities fall on others, but they don’t sacrifice cheap goods for some pretty lies.

What other way would you suggest companies could link shareholder incentives and ethics?

Hitting ESG metrics / recieving ESG credentials is a way for companies to benefit from doing the right thing.

I am a proponent of ESG but (to me at least) it doesn’t appear there is a standardized method of calculation for metrics and things like forced labor (Nike, Apple) or pandering to a govt by censoring (NBA, Google) aren’t being captured. I could be off as I haven’t studied it that much. Everyone can agree what GAAP net income is but calculating ESG metrics is much more subjective.

Ethical behaviour cannot be measured. Companies are still maximising shareholder value. They are doing it by gaming ESG metrics. Nothing has changed.

I think it can be approximated. And that's better than nothing. Would you agree?

I'm amazed the world isn't taking more action on China. Its quite sad really, 20 years ago, any one of the headlines from this year would have prompted sanctions and denunciations...

> I'm amazed the world isn't taking more action on China. Its quite sad really, 20 years ago, any one of the headlines from this year would have prompted sanctions and denunciations...

I don't think so. Nothing happened with Tibet, or after the Tiananmen Square event AFAIK.

20 years ago, the people that signed all the trade deals with countries such as China claimed it would lead to improving democracy and human rights there, obviously, it didn't, People's Republic of China has never been more autocratic. Ethical and moral concerns should have been addressed when China joined the WTO in 2001, irregardless China's political structure. China got a very good deal, western industrials as well, but at what human cost?

I wasn't interested in economy at the time, but I still remember clearly debates on talkshows between human rights advocates and people pushing trade deals and their arguments, it was a time where you could still publicly talk about the situation in Tibet. Today? Nobody would even dare.

Tiananmen was at least met with lasting arms embargo, both from the EU and US...

I think the expectation for many (myself included) was that as living standards rose, the Chinese people would demand democratic reform (rule of law, justice for all, some say in decisions and leadership). China (or rather the ccp) has successfully avoided that so far.

Now its flexing that power and people like me, who expected natural change, are forced to re-evaluate.

mea culpa

> obviously, it didn't

Of course it did, in Kishore Mahbuani's words:

>The greatest explosion of personal freedoms that the Chinese people have experienced in the past 4,000 years has taken place in the last 40 years

There's some slide back in some categories from Hu Jintao era, but overall things are progressing. The west fixates on the 1% of extra bad when it's been mostly great.

>what human cost?

800m uplifted from poverty, a few million minorities gets shafted, to be crass: the cost was/is negligible all things considered. Post 90s China bad, but mostly good. Overwhelming good compared to others with similar starting positions and much better development conditions, i.e. China had some of the most onerous WTO accession protocols and sanctions that held back her development.

It is an excellent point that the well managed Chinese economy and PR apparatus has helped the average Chinese citizen.

You would be singing a different tune if you were to come under Chinese rule.

> a few million minorities gets shafted, to be crass: the cost was/is negligible

That is the difference between a society of freedom and human rights, and mob rule. Someone else's benefits have nothing to do with the horrors suffered by people in Tibet and Xinjiang. Each one of those people is as important as you or me.

You mean the “People’s Republic of China”, right? The “Republic of China” is more commonly known as “Taiwan”.

Taiwanese companies were mostly responsible for those forced labor supplly chains in E. and S.E. Asia.

> the republic of China has never been more autocratic

This is a more nuanced issue than it might seem in some ways though. I have some first hand experience since many of my coworkers are native Chinese living in different parts of China.

Trade has enabled the growth of a previously non-existent middle class in China and they have started to assert political power in ways not immediately apparent to Westerners.

One example is the "Beijing smog" that everyone knows about. The Chinese middle class are becoming unwilling to tolerate the total environmental devastation that was the norm two decades ago. They have put a lot of pressure on the CCP to keep the air cleaner and as a result many dirty industries like iron casting have had a huge number of restrictions put on them in the last 5 years. I would consider this a direct result of the political willpower of the Chinese people.

In my experience though, the reason things like the treatment of the Uyghurs or Tibetans have not changed is simply because the average Chinese person does not care or wish to rock the boat.

Before you finger wag about that, consider the American treatment of South American migrants that has come into the spotlight in the last 4 years. I would say that the reason it has not changed has the same root cause. The average American does not care, or silently approves and thus there is not enough pressure on the ruling party to produce change.

> Before you finger wag about that, consider the American treatment of South American migrants that has come into the spotlight in the last 4 years.

South American migrants are treat fine, just not those who break in illegally (we can agree to differ if that's fair or not). I'm sorry but this is just not comparable to a possible genocide of the Uyghurs.

it was also a time, where the hero in that movie could carry a Taiwanese flag on his back.

or a time where you would see Winnie the Pooh movies being made.

little by little...

> I'm amazed the world isn't taking more action on China. Its quite sad really, 20 years ago, any one of the headlines from this year would have prompted sanctions and denunciations...

Why would world politicians take any actions against China when so many of them do have a finger in the honeypot themselves?

Invalidate stock shares* of all companies who made untold billions on China, and you will see that a huge double digit of Western politicians will go broke overnight.

The one sole reason the West was so eager to jump on the China train unlike any other broke harebrained communist country was because China went from the start to openly bribing Western elites.

The reason why China is not Iraq now is that.

> The reason why China is not Iraq now is that.

And nuclear weapons. Don't forget the elephant in the room. China has nukes, which severely limits the pressure the West can put on it.

And having 1bn people. We couldn't control Iraq or Afghanistans populations (both sub 40mil). Try a job 35 times bigger...

What would “invalidating stocks” even mean?

Here, invalidate stock shares

> The one sole reason the West was so eager to jump on the China train unlike any other broke harebrained communist country was because China went from the start to openly bribing Western elites.

This is very accurate. Recent example is the implied Biden family in CCP's pocket [1][2].

[1] Prof. Di Dongsheng's national televised speech that has since been taken down: https://youtu.be/aeegrkPx0xE [2] https://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-news/section/6/16084...

It becomes really inconvenient when you have outsourced so much of your manufacturing there. Who is going to make your stuff then? (Maybe something we should have thought of before this, but then China took a turn towards more authoritarian under the current CCP chairman.)

China is now itself outsourcing to cheaper countries, because Chinese labor has become expensive. Supply chains become flexible when the incentives are there. I think the Trump tariffs were on the right track, but for the wrong reasons.

Yes, the Trump tariffs show that there are one or two things that China will respond to.

It seems unlikely that the US or the EU will want to pay the cost in the short term.

The problem is that Europe has no appetite for any sort of confrontation. Their leadership in peace and climate initiatives mask how little they're willing to do to address issues which have a potential body-bag cost. They have poured hundreds of billions of dollars every year into a dictatorship with no accountability and its military. And shifting all that industrial capacity out of Europe certainly made it look greener, with all the smoke out of sight.

If China becomes militarily stronger and Xi's domestic position weakens, war will be his first resort. If Taiwan had to be defended, there will be very little help coming from Europe.

I've been pleased with how the EU has made progress with Iran. Maybe that plus brexit, Russia and refugees has been too much for them. We'll see I guess.

Against the largest consumer/retail market in world? Not going to happen at the country level and risk reciprocal economic restrictions.

Only way to get china to change is have people vote with their wallets and refuse to buy Chinese made stuff but at the end of the day people just don't care and just want cheap stuff.

If you gave someone a choice between $100 IPhone made by slave child labor and $1000 IPhone that was made humane conditions at fair wages, i am willing to bet more than 75% of people take the $100 IPhone.

But we're actually buying $1000 slave iPhones with Apple shareholders getting the workers' wages.

I will buy the phone made by slave child labour because the only reason they exist is because economy, if they make money, at least their next generation can live a better life. It is not likely that without a factory they will study and go to college like you would think. The alternative to a bad choice may be a worse choice, not a better choice.

I have to state a fact that there is no child labour in China. Were their child labour before? Maybe some. My uncle left home when he was 14 to work in a factory. 40-50 years ago. Nowadays, the earliest age you can find real jobs is probably 16. So no, you don't find a child labour made iPhone. But if there is child labour somewhere, you either find a not-worst-case solution or you get him out of there. And you have to think from his point of view, understand his circumstances.

The $1000 iPhone is made with slave labor. There are Korean and Taiwanese phones that are not made with slave labor.

We let China get too big without modernizing/democratizing. Massive foreign policy failure by the western world. Now they appear too big to reign in and everyone (except maybe the US) is scared of them and just wants to play nice.

We "let" them get too big? They are an ancient society who have had millions of inhabitants for centuries. They were already big, huge in fact. In the wake of Mao, however, they have a one party communist system that exterminated it's intellectual and critical class decades ago. Hard to see what could've been done during the Cold War, we tried the domino theory which was a colossal failure in Korea and Vietnam and Laos.

We let them get too big economically. We let them into the western world trading economy under the hope that they would normalize into a western-like democracy with liberal ideals. That has obviously failed.

Thats what happens when you're a country with deep pockets apparently.

There's sadly a pretty long history of the international community ignoring atrocities as long as they're contained within a country. The answer to "why won't we recognize <genocide>?" is usually "because the victims were from the same country as the perpetrators".

Tibet, Mongolia and Turkestan, though occupied by past and current Chinese governments, are different countries than China.

If all of the military in a place belongs to one country, it's hard to argue that place isn't part of that country.

Are you also amazed the world didn't take action against the US under Trump?

There is genocide going on against Muslims, and the US would typically denounce religious genocide. The current president seems more concerned with watching Fox and pardoning his friends than handling Muslim rights issues.

Pompeo has raised the issue, even if it’s not out of delicacy to Muslims

China has reached it's Hiroshima moment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj_mEiMvPMI

While the US earned its goodwill with the Marshall plan that lifted many nations from debris to wealth.

China uses threats and censorship to get its way, post Covid or as Trump puts it China virus.

No investigation or inspections have happened the whole year.

Is the post allowed to say if slaves make Amazon products?

Apple will just claim its suppliers fault. That is why companies outsource everything. That way there is plausible deniability.

It's the issue with using China manufacturing at all, although, even if Apple moved production to the US, chances are they'd still be facing forced labor allegations since they'd still need to get shipments from China for parts that can't be made in the US.

And then they'd actually have a foot to stand on in terms of defending their position.

I don't think so. Even if you just get shipments for the rare earth materials that aren't present in first-world American countries, Apple would need to do the same supply chain audits all the way from shipment to mining, and they'd still be accused of using slave labor since apparently these audits don't work and using China at all introduces slave labor into your supply chain.

For now it still makes sense to do last-leg manufacturing in China since moving to the US has no benefits from a PR standpoint (due to the reasons above) and has huge negatives with needing to import the raw materials instead of just shipping the final product from China -> Alaska -> Continental US customers.

That human rights situation in China is horrible. But I am worries things like that could actually be used to justify WWIII. Which would be even more horrible.

What will these poor soul's fate be if/when they can't be forced to work?

Is this sarcasm/irony?

Hard to tell on the internet.

Not sarcasm or irony. A genuine question. What will happen to them once they stop being a revenue source for the CPP and start being a cost.

Does Apple care more about perceptions of privacy or perceptions of using slave labor?

When you are buying a phone or computer, which do you put first?

If they just made their computers in the US like they used to they could have both, but that would mean giving up the lucrative arrangement of only paying Chinese wages but charging US prices.

They can't have both. Production in the US is less efficient (not only for labor reasons), which deprives the entire economy of the wasted resources.

I wouldn't believe anything that any Western MSMs write about China; they are basically zero credibility given the amount of fake news that they put out. It also doesn't take much critical thinking to realize the narrative that they have been pushing to the general public.

It's cute that so many HN readers consider this accusation to be true. However I'd like to remind you that China and USA are engaged in a modern edition of Cold War. I'd argue it's naïve to think that such reports can't possibly be part of this war.

It is wreckless to compare the Chinese media -- which is controlled and censored by the CCP -- to the US media which the government has little/no control or punishment over what they publish. At worst, Western media has bias from those in the media, not the government itself.

^^ I read both US and Chinese media. It's mind boggling how BOTH sides try to draw a bad picture of the other side, usually with baseless accusations. The media has definitely become a political weapon. Sad that many people don't realize this. I took all these kind of articles, from both sides, with a grain of salt.

And yet Tim Cook has the cheek to get 'woke'. Apple could easily afford to build everything in a country that isn't an awful dictatorship running concentration camps and still earn obscene profits.

And yet they still somehow maintain this aura of being the 'good guys'...

Apple's supply chain is more than 1,000 companies. Do you really think Apple has the expertise and personnel to replicate what 1,000 companies have spent decades mastering? Not likely.

No company on earth has ever been able to make a smartphone entirely themselves, and no company ever will, although i'd like to be proven wrong.

Apple's magic (i.e. brainwashing) clearly seems to work!

It's called Public Relations (aka propaganda)

Apple is a capitalist enterprise; Apple can only afford to maximize profit — everything else is just window dressing.

Wokeness, philanthropy, environmental consciousness, branding, origin story, etc.; all of these things are viewed favorably by the cultural mode. Therefore, you should expect capitalists to appropriate them to distract from, or justify, the profits they make and the concentrated power they enjoy as a result (i.e. labor exploitation, control over consumer choices, influence in the market, lobbying for legislation, dictating the terms of contracts with vendors)

Apple isn’t the problem, it’s behaving how it’s supposed to in the market capitalist system that currently dominates the world. This cruelty is inevitable in capitalism.

I guess this kind of news paints the wrong picture, or more likely to believe in this kind of thing. The more likely case is that, there are a bunch of people who are unemployable having no skills or lack motivations to work or happen to be in miserable conditions (like the homeless in US) were forced (yes) to enter this kind of "de-radicalization camps", monitored (yes) and _given_ an opportunity to get employment (like an internship for students) and get _paid_ the market salary. Yes they were forced to have a job that they can potentially do (the work conditions are like other "normal" apple factory workers). If they decline, well they need to go back to the "school"..

As long as I have to buy products built on human rights violations, I wish someone could sell me the equivalent of carbon offset credits.

You can do that. There are charities that literally buy slaves in order to free them.

Be aware, though, that there are people who criticize such practices as 1) accepting and giving legitimacy to the concept of slavery, and 2) increasing the demand, which tempts others to find ways to increase the supply. Personally, I don't find the first argument convincing. The second I could see being a legitimate concern.

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/12/world/un-criticism-angers...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/28/angeliquechris...

I’ve minimized my consumption of meat over the years, because the way we treat animals in the factory farms is too cruel.

It’s not perfect, because I eat dairy and eggs which introduce their own set of cruelty.

Likewise, I’m severely disappointed by Apple. I’ve switched from Android to iPhone because I like Apple’s stance on privacy.

I’m extremely bothered that Apple with its resource is not lobbying to change the playing field and make it expensive to use slave labor.

I get that they cannot do it today, but what excuse is there to not play the long game?

What evidence of foul play have you seen from Apple specifically? The majority of suppliers for eg, Fairphone is also in China, and Apple has the most comprehensive transparency reports and controls of them all.

Maybe you'd be interested in a Fairphone

Another vegetarian here btw; I also didn't go all the way to becoming a vegan

A huge percentage of consumer electronics—including smartphones—are manufactured by a small number of often questionable companies. Microsoft, Dell, HP, Lenovo, all have similar supply chains and manufacturing.

I'm not entirely sure what a good way to pick an "ethical" manufacturer is. One thing I like about Apple is they are somewhat transparent and at least seem to audit their supply chain.

It would be nice if instead of doing pieces like this, these organizations would give a list of manufacturers they recommend and why.

It's even worse. Apple actively lobbies against bills that try to prevent this.

Apple lobbies against Uighur forced labour bill https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u...

Not limited to Apple

"In all, ASPI’s research has identified 82 foreign and Chinese companies potentially directly or indirectly benefiting from the use of Uyghur workers outside Xinjiang through abusive labour transfer programs as recently as 2019: Abercrombie & Fitch, Acer, Adidas, Alstom, Amazon, Apple, ASUS, BAIC Motor, Bestway, BMW, Bombardier, Bosch, BYD, Calvin Klein, Candy, Carter’s, Cerruti 1881, Changan Automobile, Cisco, CRRC, Dell, Electrolux, Fila, Founder Group, GAC Group (automobiles), Gap, Geely Auto, General Motors, Google, Goertek, H&M, Haier, Hart Schaffner Marx, Hisense, Hitachi, HP, HTC, Huawei, iFlyTek, Jack & Jones, Jaguar, Japan Display Inc., L.L.Bean, Lacoste, Land Rover, Lenovo, LG, Li-Ning, Mayor, Meizu, Mercedes-Benz, MG, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Mitsumi, Nike, Nintendo, Nokia, Oculus, Oppo, Panasonic, Polo Ralph Lauren, Puma, SAIC Motor, Samsung, SGMW, Sharp, Siemens, Skechers, Sony, TDK, Tommy Hilfiger, Toshiba, Tsinghua Tongfang, Uniqlo, Victoria’s Secret, Vivo, Volkswagen, Xiaomi, Zara, Zegna, ZTE."

https://www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs-sale

Apple also lobbied against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Reprehensible.

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-nike-coca-cola-lobbied...

Passed the House, has not yet passed in the Senate.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/6210

Let me get this straight, seems like if a company uses Uyghur workers they get accused of "forced labor". Then solution is easy, lets not hire any Uyghur people. No employment Ugyhur people. Then Uyghur people know what happens, they don't have income, they stay poor. This is what these people who accuses of Uyghur "forced labor" want? China may not have the best labor laws. But this is 2020, at will employment, employment with pay, is common sense and the absolute basic basic fact supported by law. If you don't like the place you work for, if you don't want to go out of the province to work, no one, not the police, not the company, will throw you in jail. This is not slave labor. Slaving is just no socially and legally acceptable in China I don't see it ever be possible.

And let me be fully honest. Some local governments do tie special governmental poverty aids with participation in work programs. As in, you don't get certain poverty related aids if you are a able employable person but refuses to participate in a work placement program. But these people will still get standard social program, such as a basic state health insurance. And if the person is non-employable, for example, disabled, elderly, under working age, these don't apply.

Another possible situation is, a person is work-able, but has no job and has a income level below the absolute poverty standard. Recently the government has a target goal to reduce absolute poverty rates, and the way they do that is try to get every employable person a job so they have income. This transfer work placement is one of the programs. The government work with companies to create work opportunities and get people placed in them. Some people will refuse work just because they don't want to. And the government has KPIs and targets to reduce out of work people has much as possible. So government would nag people to join work. And the aforementioned tying these special poverty aids with participation in work placement. But there is no legal consequence for refuses. No one will be able to place you in a jail.

So if you say this government is coercion and "forcing" people to work this way, you can say that. But on the other hand, the idea is that people should make a living to support themselves. The government aids is partially interested in encouraging people to make a living on their own terms. A Chinese saying goes "授人以鱼不如授人以渔".

But now, various interest groups, NGOs and countries (US etc) are now painting these companies and China as a country as using forced labor. They are destroying public image, and economically sanctioning. A company could provide jobs for Ugyhur people. And frankly, some goes out of their way to do so because there are so many other people in China these companies could employ. China's job market is very competitive. And now they might lose their business and go bankrupt. And let me tell you that a lot of Han people look at this and think is special preferential treatment towards Ugyhurs. They think why do I not get these work placement programs.

I honestly feel this pretty twisted. Yes, there are bad stories in poverty reduction efforts the Chinese government is doing right now. Some local governments use illegal tactics. But the overarching goal is still positive. We as a society could leave people under absolute poverty to feed for themselves, let them stay at absolute bottom of society. But now, we set up and are doing something about it. At least we don't just talk the talk, but actually taking concrete actions. Yet, people outside of China is saying this is a "sin". And use this as an reason to punish China and the people living in the country to death.

And how interesting this comes at a time when various countries and interest groups is trying to suppress China's economic growth, how limit China's economy is the mainstream tone in the media. I don't get how actively seeking to destroy a country's economy is moral, and how no one comes out and say "hey, this is not right". Economy is prosperity, is people's livelihoods, is people's well being, is people's ability to enjoy life. Painting an economy as a target and looking for all kinds of tools to destroy it is against all of the above. I always believed people want the best for others, people want others to live a happy, prosperous live. But the foreign policy of the US for the past 2 years, things US political leaders said, media outlet around the world said, destroyed that belief. Hatred is really alive and well in this world. Living breathing people can have so much hatred in them. Some people just want to see others suffer, burn and dead. And some of these people actually hold devastating amount of power that can shape the very lives of people, even if they are small, ordinary people who live literally on the other side of the planet.

I think you nailed it, it's not about the Uyghurs, it's about not allowing china to continue its economic growth. Never mind that growth has had tremendous positive impact on average chinese citizens Uyghurs included.

"forced labor"

It's slavery...modern day slavery. Why are we mincing words? We stand on our soap boxes and preach about historical injustices and how we need to repair them. Well here is your chance to prevent a future historical injustice, and all it takes is for you to take a stand, instead of quietly consuming the products and leaving it for future generations to atone for methods by which those products were produced.

Equating slavery with forced labour belittles the gravity and awfulness of what actual slavery is (or was).

Forced labour takes different forms, which includes forced paid work and by some definitions penal work.

Slavery is when a person is treated as a property of another person. Being a slave may or may not involve forced labour.

In addition, calling Uyghur work “slavery” in fact undermines the cause, allowing CCP defenders to legitimately call out “fake news”. Precision matters.

Note that slavery is still legal in the US.

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

There’s an active attempt in congress to amend the constitution to abolish slavery in the US:

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/03/942413221/democrats-push-abol...

Legal, domestic forced labor is over a $2 billion dollar industry. People that refuse to work are retaliated against:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/23/prison...

Think globally, act locally.

"Modern day slavery" is mincing words, slavery in the modern day is just slavery. Typically slavery refers to the slave being considered property, and ownership transferring to offspring. You can compare it to forced labor.

What is an influencer to do? Switch to Android, like poor people?

Nobody who matters is going to boycott Apple.

Apple will counter with a plausible narrative, "we didn't know, we cancelled contracts, ..." and everything will be fine again.

Oh, and a new woke diversity ad to show how much they care about muslims. And everybody will share and clap and feel good.

"Forced" is the word the article uses. We don't know if that's accurate or hyperbolic. I think issues like these are worth scrutiny and intense investigation, but I'm not going to pull my pitch fork out just yet.

It's so easy to sit in my desk chair, read an article like this and have an armchair outrage moment.

Forced Labor is considered a "Crime Against Humanity" and participants can be taken to a Court of International Law.

If Apple is a willing participant, I would imagine they could be dragged in front of the Hague.

being sold at a slave market in the middle east, is quite different from being forced to work or being put in a detainment camp. a slave in this context has no human value. its owning a human being, not simply forcing them to work. it can even be hereditary. its practiced daily since a certain religious figure did it and granted his followers the same "right". (to own another human being)

Apple fans don’t seem to care, as long as they are getting their magic, nothing else matters...

Because it's not about the historical injustices. Those people don't care about injustices. They care about looking good and moral.

> instead of quietly consuming the products

The problem is the propertied capitalist class, not the working class.

The capitalist class has the power. I appreciate your intention, yet it's super important to be clear that the problem is the bourgeoisie and the capitalist system, as the means of production are monopolized in their hands. The most advanced form through which the bourgeoisie (in this case Apple) expropriates, creates enclosures and exploits/oppresses, is 1) through the use of trade secret laws [1], which steals away new inventions from the commons and stifles learning and innovation, as well as 2) through the means-of-exchange money system that obscures relationships between people and places [2].

"Zak Cope makes the case that capitalism is empirically inseparable from imperialism, historically and today. Using a rigorous political economic framework, he lays bare the vast ongoing transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest countries through the mechanisms of monopoly rent, unequal exchange, and colonial tribute. The result is a polarized international class structure with a relatively rich Global North and an impoverished, exploited Global South.

Cope makes the controversial claim that it is because of these conditions that workers in rich countries benefit from higher incomes and welfare systems with public health, education, pensions, and social security. As a result, the internationalism of populations in the Global North is weakened and transnational solidarity is compromised. The only way forward, Cope argues is through a renewed anti-imperialist politics rooted in a firm commitment to a radical labor internationalism." [3]

[1] https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2019/02/19/dont-fooled-patent-pur...

[2] http://mikorizal.org/Fromprivateownershipaccountingtocommons...

[3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43015121-the-wealth-of-s...

The good news is all macro trends portend to factories leaving faster out of China. And less trade with China.

- Unfavorable Views of China Reach Historic Highs in Many Countries in 2020 https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/10/06/unfavorable-vi.... Consciously or subconsciously, consumers will favor goods made not in China

- US President-elect Joe Biden affirms his anti-China position. On Monday, he slammed China once again for “abuses” on trade, technology and human rights and said America can best pursue its goals relative to Beijing, when it is “flanked” by like-minded partners and allies. https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/biden-slams-chines.... This should help confirm multinational COO's decisions to leave China faster.

- China keeps attacking other countries, and further isolating itself. From stopping coal trade with Australia, and causing blackouts for its own cities https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/world/australia/china-coa..., to engaging in border war with india, to antagonizing US, Canada and UK.

- Chinese suppliers engaging in more and more thievery and sabotage against its own global partners, as reported at chinalawblog. Western companies are reporting Chinese suppliers are brazenly not delivering on goods paid for.

> Apple spokesman Josh Rosenstock said the company has confirmed that Lens Technology has not received any labor transfers of Uighur workers from Xinjiang. He said Apple earlier this year ensured that none of its other suppliers are using Uighur labor transferred from Xinjiang.

>“Apple has zero tolerance for forced labor,” Rosenstock said. “Looking for the presence of forced labor is part of every supplier assessment we conduct, including surprise audits. These protections apply across the supply chain, regardless of a person’s job or location. Any violation of our policies has immediate consequences, including possible business termination. As always, our focus is on making sure everyone is treated with dignity and respect, and we will continue doing all we can to protect workers in our supply chain.”

It’s not slavery. They’re similar atrocities though. It would be weird to refer to the people in Auchwitz-II as slaves.

Why should I believe what the "Tech Transparency Project" (funded by Open Society Foundations) says over what Apple and China say? Honest question.

because investigations performed by the companies or governments themselves tend to portray themselves as not culpable for any actions (often omitting pertinent details). Independent review is the only way to be honest.

Honest question in return, why should I distrust it?

The claims seem to be roughly in line with many other reports about the Xinjiang region, China's government and worker conditions in the tech sector.

Is there something you are implying?

Who is behind the Open Society Foundation?

Anyone super political?

Well, Apple is fighting against US legislation to thwart slave labor.

If you don't believe them would you believe the US government, State Department, EU government, and the world's best free and independent press?

What about leaked primary sources from CCP [leaks]?

Huge volume of facts and research from all kinds of sources on the systemic genocide and forced labor of Uighurs and other ethnic / geographic minorities (Tibet, now scarily Hong Kong jailing and threatening the previously free press).

You can even see it on Google Maps.

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/against-their-will-the-sit... https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alison_killing/xinjiang... https://thediplomat.com/2020/10/what-forced-labor-in-xinjian... https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/resolution-121920191... https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20191212IP... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/world/asia/china-muslims-... https://www.state.gov/reports/2019-report-on-international-r...

[leaks] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/ch...

[maps] https://nationalawakening.org/coordinates/ https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alison_killing/satellit... https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/09/ch... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-01/satellite-images-expo...

There are satellite images of slave laborers in exactly that region.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.courthousenews.com/evidence...

The only news here is that they are using slaves for higher tech work than cotton.

What is your answer? How do you evaluate claims and sources, and this claim and source? You seem to imply that you can't see any difference, and if that's the case (which I doubt), nobody can help you.

> Honest question.

Are other questions are dishonest? Why should we trust you?

For people discussing the difference between forced labor and slavery, this document from the UN's office of the high commisioner on human rights, tracing the history of such terms in international law, may be helpful.

https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/slaveryen.pdf

It's crazy the majority of this thread is arguing semantics.

Note for those skimming the clickbait headlines: this is an accusation found in a report. No evidence brought forward yet.

This comment was posted before we merged the threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25570247 did indeed have a clickbait headline.

Have anybody noticed how this topic mysterious lost few hundred points, sank to second page, and then came back to front?

There is a noticable tendency for any China related topics, whether good, or bad to mysteriously disappear from the front page right at the start of the workday Pacific time, and after lunch hours.

There is a noticeable tendency for people with strong feelings on this topic to make up strong narratives about what they think they're seeing on HN. In fact, it's an extremely noticeable tendency.

This was a mundane case of merging threads, which is bog standard HN moderation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25574136. I could have just changed the URL on the other one, but preferred to go with the submitter who actually posted the story first and also posted the original article, in keeping with the site guidelines ("Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.")

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yes, it looked like censorship/manipulation, but HN explained it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25570247

I suspect a bias towards Apple though...

Note: I highly appreciate the work of the moderators in keeping HN objective, but it is not perfect- humans are naturally biased so this is to be expected...

I can attest to that. Any critic of the CCP tends to sink out of the first page in a matter of minutes. It looks like a concerted effort.

Pay attention for a while and you'll notice there's quite a list of topics and positions that are verboten,either because they have a personal army who care about them or there's a finger on the scale.

For example, lightly and generally criticizing China will get you a lot of upvotes. Criticizing China in specific ways and proposing strategies of action will get your comment down voted and flagged.

All the hand-wringing and pedantry in this thread, just to defend China and Apple.

How did you decide that? HN has always been pedantry, many actual questions are valid even if they discuss semantics or validity of the sources. It is the way HN always has been

how anybody can purchase products that are created under these circumstances is beyond my comprehension.

this isn't theoretical. this isn't abstract. it's real life. people are being enslaved for these products to be made.

if you are against slavery and purchase an apple product, you are a hypocrite.

Database of many missing or detained Uyghurs is available here: https://shahit.biz/eng/

It's very upsetting to see companies such as Apple, H&M, etc using forced labor.

I flagged this article and I really would urge everyone to actually read it before commenting.

I am very very concerned about China’s disregard for human rights, and I believe continuing to do business with CCP controlled companies is immoral.

That said, this is unsubstantiated accusations against Apple, which Apple directly contradicts. I believe Apple has a lot of leverage and resources and probably doesn’t want to do business with anyone who will make them look bad.

I feel very skeptical of this article.

I second this.

The Washington Post usually has quality content, but this one is disappointing. If you look at the author's history of articles, it's one post bashing Apple after the other (looks like there is an audience for it).

I really don't like Apple, but I like misrepresented facts a lot less.

I feel like many of the posts here are just emotions based on the title alone. Have we devolved into Facebook meme rage territory on HN as well?

FWIW paragraphs 4-6 are those denials and Xinhua has just deleted the article with the photos of people (one with a non-Han name) traveling to to Lens: http://www.xj.xinhuanet.com/2020-02/24/c_1125615994.htm

"Designed in California. Made by slaves in China."

What always surprises me in discussions on this topic is that many (seemingly) Chinese-origin commenters are bewildered that anyone opposes China's behavior. They've fully bought into the CCP narrative that the Govt is merely making the best decision for a lazy and unproductive people. Stripping people of the ability to choose their identity, stripping them of freedom of thought, stripping them of language and culture, stripping them of choice itself because their primary purpose is industrial output is wrong. I have no illusions that outside forces will change China's practices, but I don't see how they build a harmonious and prosperous society long term while doing what they're doing to large chunks of their population. So much of western innovation is based on immigrants ability to leave repressive govts for freedom of thought and practice. Will China ever be able to move from copying IP and manufacturing for others into inventing for itself?

The crazy thing to me is Apple's defense that they have instructed their suppliers not to hire any Uighurs from Xinjiang, i.e. openly engaging in ethnic discrimination of job candidates.

I guess they looked at the cost of improving the working conditions in their factories and decided that it was cheaper to simply not use any workers whose fate people might care about. I'm sure the government was happy to assist them in procuring some Han Chinese workers instead...

...but but others are doing it too, so you can't blame Apple for it!!!1

Anywhere you read the expression “zero-tolerance” you know something is happening.

1) Is there a shortage of labour in China? 2) Why do you setup a factory in areas far away from other factory and transport the components far away to Shenzhen assemble and export? 3) Were these workers paid? And were they paid fairly?

I can understand the situation. The Chinese government is trying to improve the economy in Xinjiang and encouraged companies to setup factories there. Ruled by a communist government, these companies had to comply and provide jobs to those areas, which is far from port and industry, whose workers are less trained and educated. China is hoping that by improving the economy, people can forget about independence maybe?

Evil? Kind of. Very practical plan though.

Edit: Distance from Xinjiang to Shenzhen: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi,+Xinjiang,+...

4k+ kms, 6+hr flight

One of the reason south China is more developed to northern China is that the south has most factories, it is close to port.

Please re-write your comment in the same vein, except this time about Pre World War 2 Germany and Hitler, and let me know if you have the balls to hit the submit button.

I have yet to see any actual evidence of forced labor in China. Only claims, nothing more. Americans have been fed false propaganda against communist USSR for decades, and I have a gut feeling the same is happening against communist China. Maybe it has to do with China's plan to collapse the US petrodollar global monetary system [0] and the US is trying to rouse a new Red Scare and push us into a second Cold War.

EDIT: Okay I've found 1 source of evidence from the comments in this thread [1]. I wish clickbait headlines would point to these claims instead of claims from other journalist making claims based on other journalists claims.

[0] https://www.lynalden.com/fraying-petrodollar-system/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25570485

While there probably is an element of that, hard evidence that might paint the Chinese government negatively in general is much more difficult to obtain because of information and communications controls.

I looked into the Uighur detention story a couple weeks ago and found very little in terms of substance. Most sources either traced back to the US State Department, which obviously shouldn't be trusted, or Adrian Zenz, a weirdo with a religious (literally) obsession with destroying China. It comes across very much like propaganda to decrease China's world standing and justify increased aggression economically and politically.

What the fuck is Apple doing here. They could see an iPhone boycott if this blows up.

Apple clearly does have a responsibility here, they acknowledge that themselves in their supplier policies. They have also taken steps previously to drop suppliers that have been found to use forced labour, so they're aware of the problem and willing to take action.

So the question here is what is the evidence, what does it show, and if Apple's inspections have missed anything how can they improve their policies and enforcement actions to ensure it doesn't happen again.

> They could see an iPhone boycott if this blows

Do you really expect a typical Apple user to actually care?

Others like HTC have also been accused of doing the same. You could put "Google Pixel" in the title.

Isn't it obvious? It is cheaper.

Can't Aplle produce them in India, Albania, Vietnam, Nepal, Kazakstan or another similar country where there is no consantration camp?

it's not that simple, if it was that simple to build assembly plant operating corporations, everyone would do it, but it's hard business with very low margins. There are a few big companies capable of providing apple with enough manpower/production capabilities. And even though it's a low skill work, workers still has to be trained, and more importantly have to have high work discipline(which could be considered a part of a skill set) Most countries don't have that at least in large enough numbers for companies like apple(and its contractors) to use.

They (or their vendor) weren't paying employees in India.

I am sad to say this does not shock, or even surprise me. What is also failing to shock me is how much the world absolves Apple of their responsibility, and near-total government inaction against China. Has any major western nation penalized China for it's barbarism?

It's ok though, the new iphone 13 has 3.65 times more drop resistance, is 0.053% thinner, with a girardean microprocessor for your phone to do qubit image processing on the fly.

Forced labor is quite prevalent as state-sactioned punishment, and it is much better than other kinds of punishment that exist. I don't have problem with that, that's one way how legal system pays for itself rather than siphoning fund from tax-payers' money. The difficult part for me was how opaque the process is, how the Chinese government just put people in those "camps" without due process. It is worrisome and frankly quite terrifying.

"Due process" did probably happen, at least the Chinese version of it. Even dictatorial regimes usually have to maintain some appearance of legitimacy for the things they do. That legitimacy might not be apparent or even visible for outsiders, because it is targeted to keep a sufficient majority of citizens at bay.

And before you say "but 'due process' is well-defined anywhere", I've got a star chamber in Guantanamo to sell ;)

Is a "legal system that pays for itself" even desirable? Having revenue at all would seem to bring with it all kinds of terrible incentives.

Moreover if the full cost of incarceration is borne by the taxpayer, then everyone has an incentive to fix the underlying causes of imprisonment.

Does HN have to use the same Apple-baiting headline as The Washington Post? Lens Technology sells to all mobile phone makers. They are a massive public company with many customers...

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/business/international/ho...

The guidelines ask that the original headline be used in most cases, which it looks like the submitter did. If you have a suggestion for a better one, you can email the mods via the Contact link in the footer.

Coordination of the desires of suppliers and consumers emerges from the market process by individuals deciding whether or not to engage in trades.

So, everyone complaining about Apple is free to count their displeasure as a too-high cost, and thereby stop buying Apple products.

But that would mean forgoing something you otherwise still want right now. Much better instead demand a well-armed third party change the deal. Then, having your conscience eased by shrouding yourself in righteousness, you can go ahead and buy that thing.

And by your actions, the ruling class -- both in business and politics -- can maintain and expand their power.

----

A term from economics seems apt: revealed preference. The only useful notion of preference is that revealed by one's choices, not by what one says are their preferences.

The sad fact is that most people actually don't care, certainly not enough to inconvenience themselves.

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