Hacker News Reader

Comment by fyresala | Hacker News Reader

iPhone made in China is no better than the cotton from Xinjiang.

Earlier the reports are workers in the China iPhone factory had a protest and brutal conflict with the local police. Reasons varied from unbearable working condition, the zero-covid policy, and being deceived about the compensation. After the local police oppressed the campaign, the government assigned headcounts to local villages, demanding them to fill in the factory slots. No wonder Apple loves China so much.

Apple and many westerners never understand the risk and the ethics implication of doing business in China. Apple has utilized the cheap labor at a level where can never be possible in the civilized world, as well as making great profit out of the upper class of China, who directly benefits from the oppression system of CCP or part of the party themselves. It turns out that in spite of all values that Apple promotes, it actually cares about nothing but the profit and its comfortable zone in China.

And I will not be surprised Apple will cease the plan in India as soon as China steps back from the zero-covid policy, as if all the blood has not been spilled.

View on HN

>Apple and many westerners never understand the risk and the ethics implication of doing business in China.

May be for many westerners, but not Apple. They knew exactly what they are doing.

>It turns out that in spite of all values that Apple promotes, it actually cares about nothing but the profit and its comfortable zone in China.

Which is the worst part of it all. Their insane hypocrisy.

Now that Apple is only moving assembly out of China, but they are continuing their help and bring BOE ( Display ) , YMTC ( NAND ) and CXMT ( DRAM ) into their Supply Chain. Even long time partner for Battery like LG Chem are getting less order in flavour or another Chinese Partner.

But Yes, again Apple wins the headline and PR because they are finally moving out of China. And even if this isn't even confirmed, or in the work. Vast majority of public will think everything is working in that direction or as if they have been done already.

Exactly. Tim Cook was the supply chain guy.

He became CEO because he was the only one as maniacally focused as Jobs, as proven to Steve by his willingness to make a literal deal with the devil.

The India plan will probably stick because Apple feels burned by zero covid and won’t keep themselves open to that kind of risk going forward.

Wouldn't India be similarly volatile? To an extent, it is possible to compare any country to the phenomenon that is China. Isn't the current government run by a wannabe strongman (sorry, but I cannot bring myself to use the word "strong" in earnest next to that kind of politician) the type of administrator who has shown recently to do all kinds of random moves for the sake of posturing/self-imposed grandieur?

Risk is what it is.

What you want is uncorrelated risk (that way, you always have some capacity available.)

It's at the point where corporations have to be abusive to compete. This is what happens when government doesn't require minimum humane treatment and fairness for workers, based on having a good life, not just scraping by or sacrificing themselves to the machine for their family.

> May be for many westerners, but not Apple. They knew exactly what they are doing.

Yeah right, the idea that richest company ever didnt do a proper due dilligence and Tim personally didnt have whole + and - list with detailed financial and PR projections of each choice etc. is pretty naïve. I bet stuff thats happening was pretty high on cons list.

Everybody who wants to knows how things actually look like in China on the ground knows it easily these days, no mysteries. Suicides, oppression, child labor. Yet they couldnt care less and the only reason to move away is disruption of supply.

Ladies and gentlement there you have it, true morals of yet another big corporation, not worse but certainly not better.

But anytime I said something similar here on HN I get downvoted to hell, people for some ridiculous reason create tight emotional bond with a plastic gadgets in their pocket and go to great lengths to defend it regardless of facts.

And the last item - the idea that same amoral money-driven corporation on the other hand truly, properly cares about privacy beyond moves that look good from PR perspective is dangerously naïve too. There is simply no safe commercial phone, and Apple would have to open source all software and hardware to prove otherwise, so its just not happening.

> Suicides, oppression, child labor. Yet they couldnt care less and the only reason to move away is disruption of supply. ... Ladies and gentlement there you have it, true morals of yet another big corporation, not worse but certainly not better.

Do you have a link to reports on Apple utilizing child labor, from which your conclusion is derived? How much of their labor in China is based on children?

From what I've read in the past, they became extremely vigilant in particular about eliminating child labor from their supply chains a long time ago.

If you had read something about Apple being "extremely vigilant" about eliminating child labor, it was a press release from Apple. It was a bald-faced lie, but it apparently worked, because you're unfortunately perpetuating it (even if unintentionally so).

In reality, Apple has only started to address child labor in the past two years, and that was after being exposed for their continued egregious use of child labor and unwavering support of labor abuses.

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-knowingly-used-child-l...

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-supplier-accused-of-us...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jan/25/apple-chi...

Okay, be real for a second -- Apple doing manufacturing in China benefited the common Chinese factory worker by driving up wages.

That benefit overlooks a lot of human cost involved. And if you're being real, you'd know the major beneficiary is Apple. The American companies aren't quite the saviors that folks might think they are.

Vague hand-waving about "human cost" of having factories that employ people is a load of abstract obscurantist nonsense.

Not sure if you're trolling but this wasn't even hard to find: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practices_of_Apple_Inc.#Manufa...

I wish sometimes folks could see past their paychecks, privilege, and holier-than-thou attitude. That's too much to ask. I mean, better chances at holding Apple accountable than dealing with its notorious fanbois.

I don't have a paycheck, I'm living off capital gains, thank you. Your argument is a great example of throwing a pile of words (via your link) at a question and missing entirely, because the question is, "Does foreign investment in manufacturing make workers of a country better off?" and the answer is, "Yes, vastly."

But thank you for pointing out that Communist governance is awful, we're in agreement there.

Tell me you didn't read the link, and we can both go off on our merry ways? If you did, I want to know precisely which part about 'human cost' is hard for you to understand. Set aside the 'oh you poor lot, without american money you're toast' attitude for a second (it isn't charity!), and then try to reason about it all (including the profits going back into the american coffers).

You're not actually computing the answer to whether foreign investment made the Chinese vastly better off. The answer is, it did. You can even absorb an entire Wikipedia section into the question without considering the counterfactual of what unemployment or lower-wage factor employment or agrarian employment practices were like, and the answer is yes, it did.

> then try to reason about it all (including the profits going back into the american coffers).

Apple's profits come from their customers giving them money, not the Chinese employees, who took profits as well.

> You're not actually computing the answer to whether foreign investment made the Chinese vastly better off.

That could have happened without humans being treated like cattle. I don't think that's hard to compute? If it is, no amount of 'what else could the american capitalists do if not leverage lower wage structures to their advantage' justifies that, I am sorry.

> Apple's profits come from their customers giving them money, not the Chinese employees, who took profits as well.

Employees took the profits? The profits trickled down from one mega corp to another; the line workers had to pay for it with their health. Answering "why wouldn't Apple build iPhones in the US" makes the capitalist designs plenty clear (which isn't a bad thing, and there are all kinds of ways to make money, but after a reaching a certain scale and seemingly bottomless capacity to generate revenue, it should start to matter just how it is made, as well).

You aren't addressing whether they'd be better off or worse off, with one less option for employment. A handful of complaints and controversies as linked doesn't actually provide the information necessary to draw the conclusion you claim.

Wouldn't you expect workers to be better off in treatment when the end customer has high margins, as Apple did, compared to low margins, as the next best employer would have?

> Employees took the profits?

Yes, that's why they got jobs -- the money.

And they took more at other companies, too, because having Apple do manufacturing in China also drives up wages at competing employers.

I get your point that one can't have their cake and eat it too, but the scale at which Apple operates (and its sustained strong performance) makes it super hard to justify any form of exploitation. In MBA terms, regardless of the positive influence of ginormous captial, ESG matters for ginormous companies even more.

> I don't have a paycheck, I'm living off capital gains, thank you.

Replying to worker abuse concerns with "well, I'm rich and don't have to work!" is really, really weird.

> "Does foreign investment ... make workers better off?" ... "Yes, vastly."

This argument didn't survive the 2010s, the elephant graph argument has since been thoroughly trashed as the rentier-class propaganda it always was.

China is not some meek recipient of Western wealth but instead a canny operator to the benefit of their upper classes and rulers, outsmarting the rest of the world for not the first time in human history. The West is the tail, not the dog here; foreign investment was there for the taking in a shortsighted race to the bottom.

When you insult someone in your argument, their instinct will be to clam up and double down to defend themselves even if intellectually they’d agree with you. If you truly wish to enact change in another’s point of view, allow them the emotional safe space to explore and turn around their views. Be honest and show you’re willing to work with them against the problem. Otherwise you end up with a frustrating shouting match where the other party disagrees with you more.

Agree. Though, when you see words like "abstract obscurantist nonsense", you know those kind of folks like it straight and wouldn't want it any other way.

That said, in the second-half of that comment (which might come off as argumentum ad hominem), I was speaking in generalities, and not about one particular person.

You'll be unable to paint an alternative scenario for bypassing the process of gradual wage increases because it would never work in reality.

What was China going to do, warp straight to having an economy with $60,000 GDP per capita? If things actually worked that way, countries as diverse as Romania, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Pakistan, Mexico - they'd all do it too. It doesn't work that way. You have to move up, gradually, through a very long and grinding road of progress and persistence.

Subtract the companies that provide the jobs for developing nations, and you have nothing. And you can't give a single other example throughout modern industrial history for an alternative path, because there can't be one. The capital investment has to come from outside, it has to be incentivized (otherwise why bother), and or you have to very slowly build it up from development internally + foreign trade (and that internal development will be accomplished by corporations just the same, just as it also was in China by domestic companies that behave just like Apple or worse).

Name a country that has skipped from poor and developing to affluent and developed without going through it (specifically without relying overwhelmingly on natural resources like oil, those are extreme outliers).

People forget this is actually what Singapore did. Before being a biotech and tech powerhouse, they were an assembly factory for western companies. Then they slowly expanded from that to airport, tech, airline, etc.

They have a geographic advantage too, but no one had to make Singapore a central shipping hub, it could have been anywhere else.

This is how you do it. There’s no other way. Eastern Europe is an interesting work in progress at the same thing. But the Ukraine war has really put a spanner in the works.

That's all well and good, but today's mega corps are leeches. And the world is more connected and less isolated. Things are very different from the 1950s to the 1980s to now.

Its been 15 years since Apple started the iPhone.

That's a really poor excuse for punching down when conditions and wages havent really improved.

Funnily, it is generally true given that net resource transfers to the global south have been negative for most countries... with the big exception being China[1], so China has benefited off global trade deals like these, but their income inequality isn't exactly something to look up to either (but despite that, they manage to beat the US on this stat). The other poor countries are mostly falling behind in a relative sense, and have been since the 80s, so we should certainly be thinking about disincentivising borderline slave labour because right now it isn't worth it for those countries, they simply aren't benefiting off doing it.

But also, we are moving (slowly) in the direction you'd likely prefer: Norway and Germany are now doing supply chain due diligence[2]. Hopefully we continue moving in that direction so we can push the floor up and perverse human rights violations become more of a thing of the past.

[1] https://gfintegrity.org/press-release/new-report-on-unrecord...

[2] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-and-human-r...

And to be even realer, Apple doing manufacturing in [country that isn't China] would have benefited the common factory worker in [country that isn't China] by driving up wages without also benefiting the totalitarian government of China.

Wonderful news indeed, but it’s not out of any ethical concerns, but because XI Jinping’s draconian zero-Covid policy and incessant lockdowns have made the Chinese supply-chain unreliable, something Apple like all businesses hate (remember, Tim Cook became head of Apple because of his supply-chain management chops).

Still, good to see the totalitarian tyrant Xi wrecking China just as his inspiration Mao did back in the day. Even if there is a new Deng to fix the damage after him, the world will not naively give China the same opportunities again.

> good to see the totalitarian tyrant Xi wrecking China just as his inspiration Mao did back in the day

This affects real people who just found themselves on this situation and have no power to change it. Gleefully calling the situation “good” is callous and insensitive.

Yeah its also nothing like the horrors of Mao's Cultural Revolution and the mass starvation of the Great Leap Forward.

Countries and their citizens will go through turmoil and strife regardless of how people halfway around the world react to it. Using this to show the inefficiencies of CCP management is just commentary on how China's dictatorship system hardly works when your entire cabinet/advisory board is full of yesmen.

I didn't read the parent as approving of totalitarianism or the damage that arises from it. Unfortunately the memories of Western elites seem to be very short when it comes to Chinese atrocities. The silver lining to the very dark cloud of current events is that it's increasingly hard for them to ignore how evil the Chinese system and its rulers are.

I was alive before we handed all our manufacturing capacity over to China and we got along just fine. I was alive while it was happening, too, and I remember it being sold to the public as the first step toward an inevitable transition to liberal democracy in China. All those lies are now completely unmasked. China lied, the MNCs lied, Western governments lied. Never forget all the lies we were told. Never forgive either.

> I was alive before we handed all our manufacturing capacity over to China and we got along just fine. I was alive while it was happening, too, and I remember it being sold to the public as the first step toward an inevitable transition to liberal democracy in China. All those lies are now completely unmasked.

I don’t think it was lies.

It was before my time, but the kitchen debate between Nixon and Kruschev was very ideological and I think the belief that market reforms would liberalize China, was genuine.

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/1959-07-24.pdf

Some of the arguments used by Nixon haven’t stood the test of time:

Khrushchev: We have steel workers and peasants who can afford to spend $14,000 for a house. Your American houses are built to last only 20 years so builders could sell new houses at the end. We build firmly. We build for our children and grandchildren.

Nixon: American houses last for more than 20 years, but, even so, after twenty years, many Americans want a new house or a new kitchen. Their kitchen is obsolete by that time....The American system is designed to take advantage of new inventions and new techniques.

Planned obsolescence of course, introducing a raft of global problems.

If communism failed (and I believe it unambiguously has), Americans were blind to the limits of a market system:

Nixon: … Diversity, the right to choose, the fact that we have 1,000 builders building 1,000 different houses is the most important thing. We don’t have one decision made at the top by one government official. This is the difference.

It turns out that a central party or dictators can allow a market system, while maintaining an iron grip on powers.

> have no power to change it

Who are these people? The one and a half billion Chinese are powerless to rise up? No government can subjugate a billion people. Their state is powerful but it only works because the citizenry are decently happy with their lives getting better over the last decades

> Their state is powerful but it only works because the citizenry are decently happy with their lives getting better over the last decades

China has had a billion for more than 40 years now; the only signficant challenge to the CCP's dictatorship was at Tiananmen in 1989. Communism has developed fairly sophisticated tools to help retain control; all the way up from textbooks in schools to violence as needed.

I know. But if you look at the standard of living for the average Chinese over the last 40 years it is no surprise that there hasn’t been any major upheaval. Especially coming off of Mao’s deranged dark ages-level rule.

It’s really been more of a technocracy for most of that time. Deng for example was no Mao or Xi

People always have the power, but it requires the sacrifice your life for change, we are lucky we had our ancestors do that.

> the world will not naively give China the same opportunities again.

I fear that you're wrong. Hopefully I'm the one who's wrong, but only time will tell.

My general rule; is there money in it? If so people will try again.

That’s why Banana Stands will never lose their popularity.

I don't think so. Vietnam, India or Indonesia are much cheaper places to manufacture than China, and are not threats to us like China has become.

> iPhone made in China is no better than the cotton from Xinjiang.

I think if you'll ask the suppressed people of Xinjiang, you'll find that they disagree.

> It turns out that in spite of all values that Apple promotes, it actually cares about nothing but the profit

How is Apple responsible for the Chinese Zero-COVID policy, and the actions of the Chinese police?

Have you read Apple's extensive policies on Supply Chain standards and ethics? https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/

> Apple has utilized the cheap labor at a level where can never be possible in the civilized world,

I'll just post this here from https://www.semafor.com/article/11/30/2022/apples-chinese-dr...:

> China is also no longer cheap. Wages have skyrocketed, with the average factory worker making $6 per hour on average in 2020, up from less than a dollar in 2006. The average wage of a Chinese factory worker will very soon surpass the U.S. federal minimum wage. For comparison, the average rate for a Mexican factory worker has stayed stagnant at $2 per hour.

I really hope Apple as a company dies asap. Fcking hypocrite company. One of the most morally bankrupt companies in the world.

And please, take whiny little pussy xi jinping with themselves too... in the ground.

> I think if you'll ask the suppressed people of Xinjiang, you'll find that they disagree.

Are you suggesting that China's slaves would prefer that the global economy continuing exploiting them?

> How is Apple responsible for the Chinese Zero-COVID policy, and the actions of the Chinese police?

They are enriching the entity that designed the policies and directs the police.

> Have you read Apple's extensive policies on Supply Chain standards and ethics?

Yes. Have you read the extensive laws against murder? Does murder still happen?

No, it won't. Chinese labor law is a joke. Nobody in these factories are actually working 44 hours.

I don't know where people get the idea people are semi-enslaved in factories.. Having lived in China, in my second hand experience Chinese worker protection laws are quite strict. Somewhere between US and Europe. It's not really easy to fire people and people regularly sue their employers and win. The legal system is generally very heavily biased towards the little guy

I just feel really bad for these people. They probably left some country side life making peanuts to go make some real money for a while at a factory and like send their kids to college or whatever - and now westerners are like "no, you shouldn't do that. go back to your bucolic life of poverty. And btw we hate your government". Cool

From the initial reports it sounds like Foxxcon really royally screwed up and was not prepared logistically for a lockdown.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63739562

Another big part of this whole fiasco seems to have been conspiracy-theory style rumors and just a general freakout of the workers (which is kinda understandable given how policies are opaque and feel arbitrary)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-63481793

"This young factory worker heard that the army was going to come in and take control so as to enforce a type of giant "living with Covid" experiment which involved allowing everyone in that part of Zhengzhou city to get sick."

In my experience.. even talking to educated middle class people.. these kinds of things are super common - even with all the social media controls. People believe all sorts of insane things b/c their sister's husband's cousin is in the army and told them blah blah. If in the US a double digit percentage of people believe that 9/11 was inside job - in the developing world the numbers are way scarier. It sounds like there was mass panic (again, kinda understandable given the mushroom management that's so common in Asia)

> Chinese worker protection laws are quite strict.

The fact 996 is illegal and still practiced and complained about and censored… makes any existence of protection laws being strict null and void.

Who can honestly say they did not ever flaunt worktime laws (where they exist)? IT people do 60-80 hours, in the liberal-democratic country where there is a strict limit of 48 hours/week (and the average being around 39h). People wear that as a misplaced badge of honour - and often complain behind closed doors.

Sounds similar.

I've been living in Asia for 11 or 12 years now. There is definitely a strange culture of over-working.

Young people who live at home with their parents sometimes work late because they don't want to go home to their parents.

Alot of other people work late because they want to get noticed for promotions etc.

Some of it's self-inflicted. The first company I worked for in Singapore, the 'suits' as they are called (glorified sales people) would take requests from clients and commit at 6pm to deliverying the fixes by morning, then requesting the developers stay and do the work while they go home.

So there are definitely, 100% scenarios where it's not the company itself directly demanding employees to doing insane hours. But it does happen, China requires non-overtime hours to be capped at 36 hours. People are often not compensated for any extra hours they do.

Yeah, I think it's a scenario where you can probably sue and you can probably win - but then (just like in the US) you're known as the person that sues their employer and it's a black mark.

I haven't heard of people getting lawsuits about 996 thrown out in China - but to be fair I also haven't heard of people suing over that either.

> but to be fair I also haven't heard of people suing over that either.

Guess why

the labour law was mainly for factory workers, there overtime needs to be compensated. For office workers, it is not clearly defined, because typically you are evaluated by works done, not by time as factory workers.

It is not the law or the occasional protection. It is when it is not working, the threat as experienced by local that is the issue. Not to mention the overall issue of human suppression. It is not helping by producing and buying china.

Anyway, I think they moved is not because of this though. More because the unstable situation. And the invasion of Taiwan is inevitable. I will do it if I am in power. Not because I want to but I have to. That is the problem.

And if that happened, what you do. Like German or EU on Russia oil.

How many lesson you have to learn before you call yourselves …

Your experience seems very different from what several international human rights organisations have been reporting for the past two decades.

I'd like to invite everyone here to follow for instance CLW: https://chinalaborwatch.org/

>I'd like to invite everyone here to follow for instance CLW

Unfortunately, I think we're well past the days where you can simply say, "The WHO says..." or "the CDC says..." or "<some random NGO> says..." and expect anyone to believe it's some source of truth.

As we speak, we're literally in the middle of multiple supposedly trustworthy institutions being exposed for bending the truth or creating a narrative for political reasons.

There's a cold war with China in progress. In my country we're dealing with issues related to political influence by the Chinese. Even so, I'm trying to be careful that what I read isn't merely anti-Chinese propaganda, because I don't pretend we're not guilty of that ourselves.

This reads oddly like propaganda and flies against any and all of the evidence that we regularly observe, including the protests against working conditions that we are observing now

China does have some of the best worker protection laws.

The protests we’re observing now, including the one in the iphone city, are against the government.

Let’s not conflate the two.

Wow, "are against the government", that's really some typical CCP talk seen in their smear campaign.

From what I can see people just want a bit of freedom and get their promised compensation. I doubt any of the workers has interest in overthrowing the government.

I'm not sure where you're from but for a good majority of the world, protesting against the government and wanting to overthrow the government are two very different things. I am talking about the former.

The sorry state the west has devolved into in the last 2 years.

There was a different protest at a factory in shenzhen, prior to the lockdown protests.

>This reads oddly like propaganda and flies against any and all of the evidence that we regularly observe

What evidence are you observing that has convinced you it's one way or the other?

I can go on Twitter and see some variant of the first comment and the second in almost every thread. What are you reading that you consider the "ground truth" that you can so easily point out the propaganda?

As a Canadian, I'm sure my sources are similar to yours, and I'm not really sure what the truth is. I assume it's somewhere in the middle. One thing I do know is that both "sides" are churning out propaganda at an unprecedented pace.

» I assume it's somewhere in the middle.

Sorry but this is not logical. You can't weigh two positions and say the truth is in the "middle". Sometimes one is more true than the other.

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

If one side is centrist and the other is extremist, you can't go between those two.

Your views of labor law are completely wrong.

> in my second hand experience Chinese worker protection laws are quite strict.

And yes, it's very strict. Lawful working hours are 40 hours per week. Lawfully firing a employee requires higher compensation than US.

Do you really believe above is enforced in China? Next time when you visiting China, ask them if familiar with this quote: laws in China are strictly legislated, commonly broke, selectively enforced. In fact, 996 is a norm and a company that does not require 996 will advertise that when recruiting. Layoff compensation for many people is ZERO because they don't even have social insurance or contracts signed. 100 Chinese Yuan per day, you get it when working and get nothing when leaving. (That's not the case for Foxconn though. I believe everyone working in Foxconn at least has a contract.)

> I just feel really bad for these people. They probably left some country side life making peanuts to go make some real money for a while at a factory and like send their kids to college or whatever - and now westerners are like "no, you shouldn't do that. go back to your bucolic life of poverty. And btw we hate your government". Cool

Thanks, I appreciate that. I (the OP) am that kid though. And I believe getting involved in labor-intensive industries can be a better thing than what it is nowadays in China.

I agree with the rest of your post. Like I mentioned, reasons of the protest are varied.

I mean I lived a sheltered life in the city and my friends were city folks, but I often hear people had issues firing bad employees. And on the flip side people new their rights and knew they couldn't just be left off on a random day.

Companies seemed always cautious with firing. Yeah there was tons of sneaky stuff and people not getting their contracts and lots of grey area stuff - maybe the enforcement wasn't great. But my point is that they actually have some mechanisms in place that do function when it's you vs a company (not you vs the government). So it's not fair to characterize the whole place as lawless

In this case from the news it seemed to have worked out exactly as it should legally. Foxconn messed up (or tried to get sneaky with paying people), they got slapped on the wrist by the government, everyone got paid

I hope their legal systems keep improving (it was way worse a decade or two ago) and less companies get away with screwing their employees. I'm skeptical other developing nations like India are on some other higher level with their legal systems.

I think your original post is extremely sensationalist - comparing factory work to pseudoslave labor in cotton fields - especially given you're from a background that benefitted from this (I assume your parents worked when the system was much worse)

The court system in India is notorious for delays and backlogs, to the extent that some companies don't invest there due to the difficulty of enforcing contracts.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/indian-judiciary-pend...

I am not defending the Chinese system, but you're correct that some other developing nations are as bad or worse in that area.

"strictly legislated, commonly broke, selectively enforced"

This is what Westerners, who are used to rule of law, do not understand about authoritarian countries. Selective enforcement of laws is the preferred way to punish transgressors.

In Chechnya, the Kadyrovite kingdom, there is a crossroads with a traffic light that is always red. It never turns green. People routinely drive through that traffic light on red, because it can't be done otherwise.

Why is the traffic light even there? The side road connects to a Kadyrovite palace. If there is any accident with any vehicle coming from that palace, the normal driver on the main road is automatically at fault - because he disrespected a red light.

That's loads of bullshit. People don't really understand the 40 hours per week thing. You CAN work overtime, as long as you get overtime pay, and you should have 2 days off, if you work on those off days, you should get double pay. It is very common practice in factories, where you expect to work overtime to earn more money.

In office job it is very different, you hardly get compensation for overtime, but if you go to court you definitely can get the money. The real reason is that those jobs are best paid, a few times more than other people, so people typically only sue their companies after they are fired. Yes, sometimes people worry about not finding another job, so they will accept what's been forced on them.

Born and raised in China, I stopped reading this after the first paragraph.

Laws are meaningless if they are never enforced or are simply ignored. Which happens all the time in China.

It is not easy to fire people. Sure, in normal situations. But when appropriate, government is going to ignore all these and do whatever necessary, and maybe even threaten to put you or your family in jail. Want to go to court? Good luck, the judges are going to stand with the government.

Another example: the constitution says that Chinese people have the freedom to speak, publish and demonstrate etc. Tell me how that has worked out.

> Born and raised in China.

The OP made a good point that applies to all poor countries I've lived in: those jobs are the only (even the best) way out for most people to get out of poverty, which they do to help their families/children/themselves.

Maybe you were raised in a family that did not need to go through such hard labor, but that doesn't mean your right in your view of your own world ;)

P.S. I was also born and raised in a poor country.

The point that “those jobs are the only (even the best) way out for most people to get out of poverty" stands. But the point that China has strict labor laws is laughable. The laws are indeed strict but seldom enforced.

> The laws are indeed strict but seldom enforced.

This is true of most strict rules elsewhere: they're there but seldom enforced. Take speed limits, they're strict, but good luck enforcing them. All we do is we monitor from time to time and give tickets. Yet we could enforce this to the manufacturers, right? Why can a car go beyond the speed limit if it's strictly prohibited?

We cannot compare working conditions as is, but they're easy to compare when you take time into account: how where our labor laws a couple of generations ago? Not that different than poor countries today.

So I grew up in China and I can agree that the law is applied selectively. If you are a foreign corporation and have not paid the right bribes or in good books of the ccp official in your area in charge woe behold if you violate any labor rights. On the other hand if you're friends with the right people you can basically operate a slave camp.

That being said I do agree that our attitude of "lets shut down here cuz it doesnt work for us" does more harm than good. It's not like this will solve corruption. If anything, this will give Chinese people more reason to hate on USA and India, thus further cementing their governments power.

If the government is out to get you, then yeah you're screwed.

If it's you against a company - then you typically have more protections than I think the typical western reader would expect.

I personally know people that had issues firing others at their company as well as people that got compensation when fired. Sure there are loopholes and people still get screwed a lot, but on the whole companies are generally apprehensive to fire employees and it's not totally the wild west

In the current situation, it very much sounds like it's people vs. Foxconn and that in the end people got their compensation.

You can argue that the situation was instigated by government policies, but that's sorta besides the point

I'd say you are not seeing the world as it is. In the past, a job is for life, no one gets fired, and their children will take their position in the same factory, you get housing and everything. Now, if you are in state-owned enterprise and companies, you have a job for life unless you don't want it any more. In private sector, especially small companies, you may get screwed over. No, government will not try to fire you, you are nobody to them. You can go to labour court for these things, and normally you will get compensated for illegal termination. I am also only speaking in general, not cases.

> I don't know where people get the idea people are semi-enslaved in factories.

Just normal propaganda.

I think it was the suicide nets?

It can be a case of a factory running things like that. Pretty common in the US (with immigrants) and EU (again, immigrants).

Except Chinese factories are huge and aplenty, so they would "win" by numbers.

My take is that most people use this as an excuse, no one cares about labors, if you really care about them, I would shift more jobs, they make enough money and leave factory, have a small business. I have relatives working in factories, it is the best thing happen to them.

People are afraid to say 'fk China' blindly so they have to say it under disguise of some moral ground.

> And I will not be surprised Apple will cease the plan in India as soon as China steps back from the zero-covid policy, as if all the blood has not been spilled.

I doubt it. The disadvantages of being dependant on a single source are well-understood in 2022.

They were understood just as well 50 years ago, the problem is, all these disadvantages are long term. Short term profits always win

Well understood? I doubt many organizations had a pandemic SOP/DRP before 2020.

There's no reason more should not have had one. Here are CDC notes about SARS from 2004.

https://www.cdc.gov/sars/clinical/preparedness.html

I disagree, for long term sourcing. It takes awhile to get relationships, supply chain, etc. established.

Not OP, but the way i read their comment is the problems only become apparent in the long term.

When you do a cost to benefit analysis on china it always sounds great.

Yeah, you have to deal with a couple minor PR blunders since you are hiring slave labor, 2-3 weeks ARO boat time kinda sucks but they are fair trade offs for World class manufacturing for half the cost, and obscene payment terms since the CCP is involved in the deal making (120 days Payment terms on each milestone for CapEx is normal in china).

Only do you realise that you are manufacturing in a entirely foreign regime and that regime can do whatever it wants do you realise it's a problem. You are at their whim from a import/ export tax, wars (trade, economic and real), etc.

But all the benefits are real and easy to quanitify. The negatives are ethical and imagined until they are not.

*Short term profits always win in a system of de jure financial bailouts and de facto cartels (via regulatory capture, such as the patent system).

> I doubt it. The disadvantages of being dependant on a single source are well-understood in 2022.

How many businesses rely entirely on AWS? How plausible would it be for them to move to Azure or GCP or similar?

While I have no praise for the CCP, India's current government is not without its problems: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/11/04/modi-india-personality-...

India has never been a democracy in the sense that the Westerners understood it. India is also a fucking land grabber. It has land grabbed every single of its neighbors once the British left town. You never hear it in the West because it doesn't fit the narrative the West has on India.

Could you please expand a bit on the land-grabbing part? I would love to learn more.

https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/136236833245/expansi...

You're welcome.

Dear lord, so many absolute lies on that page that 5 min of basic, simple research will invalidate.

I snorted at this:

"An earlier example is India’s creation of the Tamil Tigers which plunged Sri Lanka into many years of civil war."

That's like stating the US founded the Nazi party and ran the Schutzstaffel. Absolute rot.

I might add that India acquired a new territory dispute with Nepal just a few several years ago by unilaterally publishing a new map incorporating what used to be part of Nepal territory (according to India's old map) into India's new map. The action triggered a counteract by the Nepalese government when it published its own map.

These newly acquired disputed territory is different than the old dispute of Kalapani. In that case India requested Nepal to grant India access to Kalapani to better monitor China's troop movement during the 1962 war with China because Kalapani is on a high ground. The problem is once India squatted on that land it never leave and is still squatting on Kalapani to this day.

This comparing Indian Democracy with CCP is public exhibition of Intellectual dishonesty. No, they are not even in the same ball park.

Is there corruption in India, absolutely. Can you oppose the Indian government politically and still make hand over fist money, absolutely and in Indian South, East, North, West even in New Delhi itself.

Try getting a loan in China and being vocal critic of CCP. Indian democracy has different energy but when you consider transfer of power after election, it is a run fucking away success.

> Apple and many westerners never understand the risk and the ethics implication of doing business in X

For clothing, people can check the label. Most consumers simply don’t care enough when fast fashion is cheaper and more convenient than “ethical brands”

Sonetimes you go buy an ethical brabd, and then turbs out ut was from thevsame factoemry. Mahor brands like Nestle havecslavery in the supply chain, without chiba being involved

For Nestle, supply chain is the least evil thing. Hard to beat their baby formulas marketing

Fuck Nestle.

People never see the harm done so they are basically ignorant.

Most people wouldn't eat meat if they had to kill an animal either.

Plenty of people live on farms and grow animals, kill them and then eat them.

I haven't killed one myself, but I have been at pig butchering "parties" at my grandparents or uncles and saw how the sausage is made. Still tastes yummy.

I bet if you ask city people to either kill an animal or grab a shrink-wrapped package containing a vegetarian meat substitute, by far the majority would choose the latter.

… For a meal or 2, and then they're just as likely to grab the knife after realizing how nasty those meat substitutes taste compared to the real thing.

I would guess a fair amount of city dwellers have gone fishing.

But you're also comparing apples to oranges. I would take the shrink-wrapped thing to, just because I have neither the means nor the skill to slaughter (or store) an animal. Offer people to either get a crate of raw soy or kill an animal, then we are at a comparable level.

Ok, if it was not clear, add:

... under comparable circumstances.

I've been there as well. Disgusting all around. I refused to eat it. Would've gone vegetarian 30+ years ago if I could.

> Most people wouldn't eat meat if they had to kill an animal either.

I remember clearly we did the fattening and killing of chickens at home when I was a child. I had to step on a broom stick that was on the chicken neck, and wait until the chicken died. Then the adults cooked it and we ate it.

There was nothing strange or shameful about it, chickens were not 'pets', and every household did the same.

I would say people will step down their high horses as soon as the hunger and need of protein can not be satisfied with supermarket meat.

Not slaughering your own food is a pretty recent thing and still how common in a large part of the world. Seems like a comment from an innocent kid this one.

> Apple and many westerners never understand the risk and the ethics implication of doing business in China.

Apple industrial partners are all asians. Samsung and the like don't do any better regarding ethics. Not sure why the divide with the "ignorant west" is necessary in your argument.

Of course people at Apple understand the risk, and it is taken into account to generate as much profit as possible.

> Apple industrial partners are all asians. Samsung and the like don't do any better regarding ethics.

You can rightfully complain about labor practices in other Asian countries, but forced labor from concentration camps is a uniquely Chinese atrocity.

And one that's usually not done by Apple or Samsung, but by contract-manufacturers like Foxconn. Both Apple and Samsung use Foxconn. The "iphone factories" aren't Apple-factories, they're Foxconn factories which currently produce iphones but will produce Samsung galaxy phones if iphone production moves.

It's a "companies use Chinese as-close-to-slave-labor-as-you-can-get-without-being-called-out-labor" thing, not a "naive Western company finds out how things work in China" thing.

I think you should read up more in Asia if you think slave labor is unique to China, you can start with Thai fishing industry.

Btw not that it would be case with Apple, these are Taiwanese companies with factories in China, so maybe instead blaming China blame the Taiwan, but I understand it's not trendy.

Oh and let's not forget "democratic" Vietnam with communist gov censoring internet and imprisoning people for opinions, where did I see that? And don't get me started on biggest "democracy" where you still have caste system which is mutually exclusive with democracy. Lived in China and visited all these for extended periods and it's very naive to think Vietnam or India are some step ups conscience wise.

There is a general lawlessness in India the 'biggest democracy' but aside from that large swathes of area in India is under a law that gives the state the power to imprison or kill anyone with impunity. No due process, no question asked. Anyone can be jailed or be killed by the state if the state deemed the person a security threat for whatever reason. The law is called AFSPA (Armed Force Special Power Act) and is imposed in Kashmir and the northeast. It is a brutal law that no civilized country should have.

Or about the people forced to run Bitcoin scams in Sihanoukville, Cambodia.

I guess that would still be improvement from infamous Chicken farm.

Just for completeness, the US has its own flavor of issues here in its prison system.

Just 23¢ to $1.15 is the typical hourly pay [1], and work is not always voluntary and up to the same employee protection/safety standards as true employment [2].

Labour sourced from the incarcerated creates problematic incentives in law enforcement.

[1] https://www.bop.gov/inmates/custody_and_care/unicor_about.js...

[2] https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/2022...

This is true, and one of the great tragedies of modern US society, but doesn't lessen the immorality of what China is doing.

If someone actually commits a serious felony—murder, rape, car theft, aggravated assault—I think they should be sentenced to forced labor.

Forced labour means profit for someone. That is far too close to slavery to avoid major value clash, so it will hide itself to present a respectable face. Corruption is inevitable. You'll end up with judges sentencing children for profit. Off to the new world in fetters. As the setting for a novel, I'm convinced.

> uniquely Chinese

No. It’s not. See also: the US prison labor system.

It appears I worded my argument wrongly. I am not comparing asian countries. I am only stating that the ones directly in charge of forced labor in this case are asian companies (Foxcon to start with). And that the ones giving orders are interchangeably asian or "westerner" companies (Samsung and Apple being two examples).

My point was that when it comes to profit and exploitation of workers, dividing in between "nice asians" and "mean westerners" is completely wrong.

lets not compare South Korea and China please...

I was comparing Apple to Samsung. But OK.

I basically agree with you on all points.

But can we please drop this "civilized world" term?

I suggest "democratic world".

If you agree with all the points, then civilized seems apt.

You can be "civilized" and an autocracy. Certain aspects of modern China makes the West look like a backwater. Hell, even Russia has less people in prison than the US and free heath care.

Also, that phrase just reeks of imperialism, racism and superiority - just a modern version of "savages who need our one true religion". OPs argument is about democracy, not level of development and culture.

For clarity: I'm anti-autocracy

What aspect of China makes the West look like a 'backwater'? I literally cannot think of a single thing. That doesn't mean China has no positive aspects. The West is also not monolithic.

> What aspect of China makes the West look like a 'backwater'?

Compare China homicide rates to USA.

Or China incarceration rate to USA incarceration rate.

I have not done any research on this and am genuinely interested - why can I trust the numbers the CCP releases on incarceration rate?

According to stats there are 1.3 million people incarcerated in China.

If incarceration rates in China were similar to those in USA it should be 10.3 million people. It would be pretty hard to hide them.

USA are by far the number one country in the World for jail population and for incarceration rates, worse even than Putin's Russia.

They would love to share the top step of the podium with someone else if they could prove it.

The most logical explanation is that they can't, because the numbers are probably not true, but not too far from the truth.

Does this include the 12.8 million Uyghurs in China?

Probably those are not on the “stats”

Do you seriously believe that all 12.8 million Uyghurs in China are literally imprisoned?

This is what a walk down the street in Urumqi looks like: [0].

It's possible to talk about Xinjiang without going over into hyperbole.

0. https://youtu.be/_OMaUIC4Om8

Some source to backup this number? Are they actually in prison?

IMO the fact that we should be skeptic about China official stats means that we should also refrain from throwing random numbers at the wall hoping it will make China look bad.

BTW, two wrongs don't make a right, it's not about what they do wrong, it's about what we do better, like for example, is Guantanamo acceptable in a western democracy?

I’d argue that most of the numbers you’ll find apply to the US, not to the west. The US is pretty much known everywhere for having third world shortcomings on specific areas.

I agree.

The problem is we as westerners are guilty by association.

I don't approve of the US methods, nonetheless they represent the west in most non westerner people eyes.

we all know that NATO==US even though it should be a coalition.

That's why I, as European, hope in a strong and independent EU, at least we'll make our own mistakes.

China has less prisoners and the fastest wait times for organ transplants.

The combination of those two things make it sound very suspicious ...

Also, China’s incarceration rates don’t count people who have been welded into their apartments under the zero-COVID policy.

> Also, China’s incarceration rates don’t count people who have been welded into their apartments under the zero-COVID policy

Do you know any Country that counts that?

For example, does the US count the penal labor as labor camps?

Potato potato.

US has also many more strip clubs

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

The United States ranks as one of the worst countries in the world for human trafficking

Despite a common and widespread misconception, human trafficking is not just a problem outside the US. It also happens here, within United States borders, and in every state.

https://deliverfund.org/the-human-trafficking-problem-in-ame...

Listen, let's have an honest discussion here.

What China does better than USA?

Less people incarcerated is good, how the prisoners are treated is another issue entirely and of course China can and should be heavily criticized for that.

But penal labor for literally cents/day or private prisons as a source of profit or the death penalty are something that the US, above all, should be able to improve on, before lecturing other countries over human rights.

Let's talk about

“Guantanamo Bay is a site of unparalleled notoriety, defined by the systematic use of torture, and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment against hundreds of men brought to the site and deprived of their most fundamental rights.”

This is a statement from "The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations".

What have the consequences been? Nothing. Literally nothing has changed!

People have been detained there for years, most of them without any charges, denied of the right to a due process, only because they were Muslims.

39 of those men are still kept captive there as of today, 20 years later, 27 of them have never been charged with any crime, the others have been cleared for transfer years ago, but are still there.

Imagine if China did something like that what the US would be saying about it.

That's the moral short circuit: if it's wrong it must be wrong for everybody, especially for those claiming to hold in high regards human rights, not only if China or Russia do it.

> What aspect of China makes the West look like a 'backwater'?

Growth, for one.

It’s easy to grow with such a low gdp/capita.

Tell that to the nations who've been in a cycle of abject poverty for centuries.

> What aspect of China makes the West look like a 'backwater'?

Transportation infrastructure. 5G connectivity.

We do plenty of uncivilised things in the democratic world. Casting China as uncivilised empowers the CCP to point at our prejudices and argue that their way is better and any Chinese who support democracy are self-hating traitors.

then USA should not be considerd part of the civilized World.

A country where it is acceptable to have workers forced to pee in bottles or bullied by their new CEO (who's also a pathological liar)

Yeah considering that China for about 2000 years was the leading civilisation I'm not sure why people use that term.

> Yeah considering that China for about 2000

More like 500 years (1000 years at best if you stretch it very hard)

China harkening back 2000 years is like the US harkening back to Rome.

Fact is modern communist China is actively erasing its history and is quite new on the world stage.

It's more like the British harkening back to Chaucer's England.

The problem with the Rome analogy is that China has had much greater continuity than Europe. China is what Europe would have been, if the Roman Empire had been reconstituted each time it collapsed.

Imagine if there were still one political entity ruling the entire Mediterranean basin and Western Europe, calling itself "Rome," speaking a Romance language, and in which every educated person was still capable of reading the Latin classics (with some difficulty).

China's recorded history goes back more than 3000 years. Granted, it was only unified 2200 years ago.

I don't know if any possible interpretation of Chinese history that puts China's formation a mere 500 or 1000 years ago. The Qin dynasty (3rd Century BC) is really the absolute latest point at which you could say China came into existence.

Because it’s a propaganda term meant to imply China is uncivilized without directly saying it. Like calling America a democracy. We know it’s not but propaganda keeps that image “out there.”

How do you define leading?

> I suggest "democratic world".

That's funny. Where is that?

Not the U.S., that is for sure. Look how the government just screwed over the rail workers:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/01/joe-bi...

There is a one world government and it is a oligarchy.

> I will not be surprised Apple will cease the plan in India as soon as China steps back from the zero-covid policy,

Companies are not stupid to invest billions just to get manufacturing for few months. If someone is making assembly plans they will be willing to use it for atleast 4-5 years

> Apple and many westerners never understand the risk and the ethics implication of doing business in China.

That was a a great apology for colonial industrialism and how US companies exploit workers in other countries and just move on when they also decimate their culture.

They know the risks. They do not care. They are on to the next "risk" where there will make another few billion.

Truth is, there is no way to profitably produce any durable consumer products without dealing with someone who treats workers like trash, simply because everyone else is also doing this. Of course, we have a choice of them being Commies (China), or not being Commies (India), but that's about it.

Only way to fundamentally fix it will be to introduce a new Iron Curtain where we will "not trade with anyone we don't control", and that might work after a few frustrating years of high inflation and shortages, but will be too politically costly to try.

> Truth is, there is no way to profitably produce any durable consumer products without dealing with someone who treats workers like trash, simply because everyone else is also doing this

In some cases that's true, but in the case of Apple - the one with higher cost "luxury" products, double digit percent profit margins, tens of billions of cash and trillion dollar market cap - it doesn't really make sense as an excuse.

Apple has grown to this size because they had a much better margin than its competitors in the first place. If they built everything in America they would have disappeared long ago.

Calling China Commies is misplaced, its a self proclaimed communist state in the same way that North Korea is a self proclaimed democratic state. I think (not sure) China is mostly seen as "state-capitalist" by experts, which means a capitalist market with heavy state control & influence.

To label China as communist is similar to labeling the US as a company: it's a misrepresentation of the truth and says more about the labeler than about the country itself.

Maybe but as long as there is a trade war between the US and China, China seems to be a bad place to make iphones. Apples contractors need to find another place to due business so they dont take a hit to their bottom lines.

It seems like more robotics is called for, if only Apple had the money to invest in it...

>iPhone made in China is no better than the cotton from Xinjiang.

High quality hardware and cotton that lifts peasants out of poverty through heavy state coordination with proceeds reinvested to move up value chain. No better = equally good.

Ethics get in the way of maximizing profits. We could have ethical treatment of workers with affordable phones while the rich stay rich, but we're afraid of that

I feel the western general population shares responsibility. We all know whats going on and are told repeatedly but don't care or act.

Doing well at the expense of some of the population, name a more draconian duo heh.

Sure, let's move some of that production to Vietnam because they are good communists!

> I will not be surprised Apple will cease the plan in India as soon as China steps back from the zero-covid policy

It seems unlikely that zero Covid is the issue for Apple…

Wrong. The protest is about compensation, the workers were promised to have 10k once they get pass the probation period, 3 months. They were let go before the 3 month probation finished, and they demand the payment. You don't just go around developing world and criticize people not eating organic food or anything. It is not right. I wish Chinese workers get paid the same amount as their western counterparts, the fact is that factories moved there because of they can pay less. Is it a bad thing? No, apparently we need dollars to import anything, so they are making less money in western standards, but at least they are making some money. Has fairtrade coffee made African countries as rich as Europe? it will never happen, forget about ethics, if you are taking away the financial base where people can make a living, you are taking away everything.

Wait, are you saying because China isn't rich, workers shouldn't have rights? I'm legitimately asking, because when you boil down your argument, that's what it sounds like.

Flying geese companies move there exactly because Chinese workers can be abused nearly at will given that the focus of the government is (was) development at all costs

Flying geese will always abuse their workers, that's what Apple is. Same with let's say Foxconn

No, developing world DOES NOT have a choice, that's a fact. Unless you are sending money every day to developing world, taking their jobs away is basically murdering people. Maybe too much for soft westerns who didn't understand why people risking their lives and their kids' on a boat to Europe.

Workers have rights. They have the rights to choose to work or not, they have the rights to feel happy about their salary and compensation or not. Things develop naturally. People want factory to move out of China not because they care about worker's right? If they care about the right, they would ask Apple to pay more instead of moving out of the country. Did I say workers shouldn't have rights? You cannot boil down my argument to a sentence does not make sense. Developing countries need to make tradeoffs. Work extra time so their next generation can live better. These things are not given, it is not like you are a great social activist and your country suddenly can improve economically as well. The world is under financial colonization, developing world is at the bottom because their influence is weak.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com