13 ms·

Life and death in Apple’s forbidden city

164 points by clumsysmurf 9y ago

Retric 9y ago
It's important to remember employed people normally have a lower suicide rate than average. So Foxcon's rate is similar to the national average, but higher than the national average of employed people.
- mfoy_ 9y ago
  That and it sounds like groups of workers regularly use the threat of suicide pacts to gain leverage over management-- not to improve conditions, or anything drastic-- just to get paid what they are owed.
- djtriptych 9y ago
  Do you have a source?
  - Retric 9y ago
    It's usually referred to as an increase in suicide rates for the unemployed: long form: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/02/the-link-between-unemployment-and-suicide/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/02/the-link-between-unem... Random paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277953693900353 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/02779536939...
- tooltalk 9y ago
  Let's not forget that the average age of Foxconn worker is only 23. According to (somewhat dated) WHO, that age group has the lowest suicide rate (http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/chin.pdf http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/chin.pdf) Number of suicides by age group and gender. CHINA (mainland, selected rural and urban areas*), 1999. Age (years) 5-14 15-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+ All Males 83 626 1357 1287 1196 1165 1325 1009 8048 Females 64 915 1937 1351 1186 1017 1273 1045 8788 Total 147 1541 3294 2638 2382 2182 2598 2054 16836 the same age group has the lowest suicide rates in other countries (eg, US) as well.
  - fludlight 9y ago
    You should look at per capita suicide rates because populations are not distributed evenly by age group. Also, China in 1999 was a very different country so it's difficult to draw conclusions from this dataset about the situation there today.
    - tooltalk 9y ago
      Sure, I also accounted for the One-Child policy which started in 1979. It still supports the conclusion that the suicide rate is much lower for that age group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#/media/File:China_Sex_By_Age_2010_census.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#/media/F...
  - 123e1daAdfafsdf 9y ago
    Suicide is an especially sensitive death classification, and I would assume even moreso in a place like China. What is your opinion on the validity of these data?
jp_sc 9y ago
Doesn't Foxconn also manufacture products for many other companies? It doesn't matter because, at the end of the article: "This is an edited extract from The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone by Brian Merchant, published by Bantam Press (£16.99). To order a copy for £14.44 go to bookshop.theguardian.com"
- msbarnett 9y ago
  PlayStations, other cell phones, the nintendo switch,... They manufacture everything
- briffle 9y ago
  They recently announced they are going to build a huge $10Billion plant in Wisconsin to build LCD screens. (likely related to their Sharp acquisition)
  - tapatio 9y ago
    Only if they get the massive tax breaks they are demanding.
    - ForRealsies 9y ago
      Not an uncommon practice for state governments luring new business.
    - derping69 9y ago
      a small slice of pie is better than all of a non-existent pie because the pie relocated to another state or country
      - nobodyorother 9y ago
        With the 3BN tax-dollar giveaway, Wisconsin will not receive any positive pie returns from Foxconn until 2043. Assuming Foxconn doesn't move on to another location in 2042. It's worth pointing out that Wisconsin is giving billions to a company where working conditions so bad that workers have been killing themselves there since 2010: "It wouldn’t be Foxconn without people dying."
afpx 9y ago
The only thing that I can add is an anecdote. Around 2000, I worked at a startup that was streamlining the globalization logistics for large manufacturers. One aspect of our software was a qualitative and quantitative rating system for factories in low-cost countries. One of our largest challenges was coming up with reliable scoring metrics that couldn't be gamed by the factories. Because Of this, we eventually had to resort to randomly sending physical auditors to factories. I wasn't part of that side of the business, but we had systems that allowed these auditors to enter data and notes. It wasn't uncommon for them to report on suicides. At the time, we didn't know much about Chinese culture beyond what we understood through movies and such, so we thought that 'suicide' was a euphemism for 'forced suicide'. Who knows - But, people would just disappear, at least at a seemingly higher rate in China than elsewhere. It was quite chilling.
- matt4077 9y ago
  Please note that the myth of a high rate of suicides at Apple's factories has been proven to be an invention.
  - tajen 9y ago
    Given how many times it's been said and how sensible the question is, would you have a source for that?
    - jdietrich 9y ago
      It's simple maths. In the worst year for suicides, Foxconn had 14 deaths out of 930,000 workers. Divide one by the other and you get a remarkably low suicide rate by any standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides
      - vacri 9y ago
        It's not 'simple maths'. Those are 'on-campus suicides', not 'all suicides in the demographic'. Your own link also points out that suicides are mostly elderly rural people, which doesn't line up with the Foxconn worker demographic.
peterburkimsher 9y ago
I went to Shenzhen and worked for Egoman, a Chinese company that made the first batch of Raspberry Pis, before that manufacturing got moved to Wales. The dormitories look typical. I arranged to stay in one through a different friend; mine wasn't arranged by the company. Now I'm in Taiwan, and life is better here. Factories are newer and cleaner, and working hours are more sane. Chinese factories often set long shifts because there's nothing to do in the local area except work. Kaohsiung has much more local culture than Shenzhen, so the workers are more interested in time off, and happier for it. I've been here for 3 years to get the necessary work experience for future visas. I'm now considering other options, particularly New Zealand or Australia, where my girlfriend and I both want to go. Please ask me if you have any other questions, I'm willing to share my experiences.
- breakbread 9y ago
  Where are you from originally? What people usually do after their shift ends? Just return to their respective dorms? Are their any public spaces in or around the factory where people gather?
  - peterburkimsher 9y ago
    I grew up in Geneva (born in Switzerland, parents live at France but work at CERN). But my passport is British by descent. I'm trying to go to NZ because it's the fastest way for me to get Permanent Residency. I can't have kids until I get PR, because British-by-descent only goes one generation. First I went to Xingda Hongye in Fushazhen, near Zhongshan, China. It's a long way outside the city, and there is seriously nothing to do nearby. There's a small café on-site, and people sometimes go for a walk down to the (polluted) river. Otherwise they hang out in the (male/female segregated) dorms, playing card games and watching videos online. A few people have laptops and play computer games. Some people also hang out in the cafeteria, or play some sports (ping pong is popular). There isn't a single social room though, so people just kind of scatter throughout the campus when they're off work. In Shenzhen, I stayed in a factory dormitory in Longgang, but was working in an office. It would take 20 minutes by bus to the nearest metro station (Universiade), which made it difficult to see my girlfriend at the time, because the bus would no longer run so late. I would go out to nearby restaurants to eat instead of staying in the company. There was a nice park nearby where I'd eat a bendon lunchbox. There was also a school, and some of the school kids were picking mangos from the trees on the side of the road to eat, for fun. They all wanted to take pictures with the handsome foreign boy, haha. All the people in Shenzhen are not local though - the city was purpose-built for electronics manufacturing, and people speak Mandarin instead of the local Cantonese because they come from all over. I made friends with a guy from Xinjiang (the Muslim separatist state) at a noodle shop, and he made some delicious noodles. The lack of Facebook and church made it hard for me to make many local friends though. QQ and WeChat are fine for one-on-one chatting, but hard to make Groups and Events. Another interesting thing to note is that many business owners (including my boss there) are Taiwanese. Despite the political tension, there are a few ways that Taiwanese can invest in the Special Economic Zone areas, and they do. Meanwhile in Taiwan, the workers mostly come from SE Asia (Philippines, Vietnam). That means the managers can speak much better English. The factory is inside a special compound (Nanzi Export Processing Zone), and does not include accommodation. There's 2 universities nearby, history going back about 400 years, and plenty of genuinely local people who are there to live, not just to work. After I leave work, I visit kids in the hospital with a Christian group, or study Chinese, or go to the CouchSurfing meetup. On weekends I go hiking, to music concerts (lots of indie rock here), hot springs, waterfalls, or church. There's a lot more happening here than in China, in my opinion.
teemo91 9y ago
How economically feasible is it to automate assembly? It looks like a lot of human suffering can be lessened if at least some parts of assembly are automated.
- oneplane 9y ago
  It's all perspective, just like (paid) child labor in some cultures. While west europeans and most north americans oppose child labor and slavery, in some countries and cultures it is only the 'lesser evil', compared to sex slavery/prostitution, starving to death or getting maimed to then beg for some pimp type of situation. Is the human assembly line ideal? No. But for many workers it seems that the alternatives in the rural areas are either non-existant or pretty bad.
- simonh 9y ago
  Have you ever been to the Chinese countryside? I have, my wife is Chinese. My wife's sister is disabled and married a man from the countryside, a common arrangement in China, so I have relatives from the country. Trust me, sending all those workers back home really isn't going to do an awful lot to reduce human suffering. They choose to go and take those jobs for good reasons. Many of the workers in those factories are women. After a few years, they often go back home as the wealthiest members of their families, with enough capital to build homes and start new businesses of their own. It's actually started a distinct demographic trend. People have all sorts of bizarre ideas about china. Sure the conditions in these factories are awful by western standards, but China isn't the west. The same basis for making decisions just don't apply. Hopefully they will one day, but we're not there yet.
maxk42 9y ago
38 suicide attempts among 450,000 workers would place Foxconn's suicide rate at lower than the general suicide rate across the US.
- DanBC 9y ago
  Yes, 38 per 450,000 people would be a bit lower than the current US rate. It's very hard to compare suicide rates internationally because different countries have different definitions, and the people who do the counting are not consistent. The US probably undercounts suicide. The age standardised rate is roughly 13 per 100,000 China definitely undercounts suicide.
- dade_ 9y ago
  Unless they are US veterans, which is 135 suicides per 450,000 per year.
mfrykman 9y ago
A friend of mine is an investigative journalist in China - he spent a while working in a helmet foam factory and living in a dorm such as the one in the article. He heard rumors that the Chinese mafia would pay workers to commit suicide at Foxconn in exchange for money for their family in the countryside. The mafia would then threaten suicide attempts as leverage to extort concessions from Foxconn. Not sure if it's true (was only a rumor), but certainly got me thinking about it from another perspective. Some of my buddy's work: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvwj3k/chinas-21st-century-eunuchs-v23-n3 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvwj3k/chinas-21st-centur... http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/roads/2015/09/xian_village_the_residents_of_an_ancient_village_in_southern_china_are_in.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/roads/2015/0...
- dopamean 9y ago
  Honestly, that sounds like a convenient rumor for Foxconn.
tziki 9y ago
One thing I always find chilling about stories like these is the description of work - specifically, how easily it can be automated. Very few people in western countries depend on jobs like these, but your average Chinese doesn't have much padding against automation taking away this type of jobs. Articles like these make me feel very lucky to have been born into a country which gives me enough opportunities to pad myself against obsolescence.
- codyb 9y ago
  I wouldn't say very few, driving is a large portion of many breadwinners duties whether they're cab drivers or truck drivers and those jobs will very shortly in the grand scheme of things be automated out. Tellers, and clerks are another big group of people who might be hit pretty hard by automation.
  - rubidium 9y ago
    If the automated checkout at the grocery is any indication, truckers will be ok :)
    - colejohnson66 9y ago
      > truckers You mean checkers? Because with self driving cars somewhere around the corner, I could see truckers getting replaced with self driving trucks sometime in the future.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      I've been using automated checkout at Ralph's for a year now, couldn't be happier.
- nomel 9y ago
  > how easily it can be automated You're correct. Here's a story of them replacing 60,000 people in one factory. Just incredible! http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966
bwang29 9y ago
This is an extremely well written story, I kept imaging action scenes from thriller. But I kept wondering the legality of actually stepping into an iPhone fab without permission. As the journalists might be seen as given prior approval, what if they saw the new iPhone and how does journalism in here functions toward revealing information v.s. respecting policies. I also felt that the reason this article was written is only for partially humanitarian cause, but still largely trying to capture curiosities from readership, and the risks definitely seem to have paid off.
basicplus2 9y ago
Reason enough not to buy apple
- emsy 9y ago
  Apple is about one of the very few companies that at least have a program to check and improve working condition of their manufacturers. If you don't want to be a hypocrite, you've got to stop buying most tech all together.
- simonbarker87 9y ago
  Given how many products are made by Foxcon and all the companies similar to them you would be better off saying "reason enough not to by an electronic product"
Grustaf 9y ago
If they beat a journalist for taking photos from the outside, I'm quite worried what they'll do to the guard that let the author in.
Tanegashima 9y ago
As we all can see, we're narrowing the release of a new iPhone. An article from June gets reposted...
icu 9y ago
As consumers we have the power to vote with our wallet. I'm actually proud to say that the last Apple product I bought was the iPad generation 1 for these exact ethical reasons. I'd really encourage others to look at the companies they buy from and see if they align with your morals before making a purchase.
- simonh 9y ago
  What phone and/or tablet do you use? Clients of Foxconn include Amazon, Microsoft, Cisco, HP, Dell, Huawei, Nintendo, Sony, Toshiba, Motorola, Blackberry and many more. They don't just make iPhones. Next time you look at an XBox or Switch, guess where it came from? Do you know that workers prefer to work on the Apple lines because Apple has greater say in the factory conditions than the other clients and pays the workers on their lines more? When you looked into the companies you buy from, how far did that research go?
  - icu 9y ago
    I use a Fairphone based on Ethical Consumer's research (http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/mobile/phonebroadband/mobilephones.aspx?mobileversion=true http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/mobile/phonebroadband/mobilep...) I still have my iPad Generation 1 as my use case for it is reading epub and pdfs and that hasn't changed since 2010. Also my ethical stance with regards too my consumerism is something I've been doing since 2014. Granted my laptop is a Dell XPS 15 9550 and while the machine itself is very environmentally friendly Dell's ethical practices leave a lot wanting but so do the other ultrabook manufacturers. In my line of work I am often client facing therefore I need form and function. I'm at least aware of the trade off and my eyes are open with regards to whom I'm supporting with my money. To answer your question about how far I go, I rely on Ethical Consumer a lot and my own internet searches before making a purchase. Of course I'm also on the lookout for reputable news articles that are focused on this area good or bad.
    - simonh 9y ago
      Well, personally I have no problem supporting highly sought after jobs in China, and industries that have helped raise hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and transformed the country into a modern advanced nation. If you'd seen what China was like the first time I went in 2001 and saw it again today, you might understand.

164 points by clumsysmurf 9y ago

It's important to remember employed people normally have a lower suicide rate than average. So Foxcon's rate is similar to the national average, but higher than the national average of employed people.

mfoy_ 9y ago
That and it sounds like groups of workers regularly use the threat of suicide pacts to gain leverage over management-- not to improve conditions, or anything drastic-- just to get paid what they are owed.
djtriptych 9y ago
Do you have a source?
- Retric 9y ago
  It's usually referred to as an increase in suicide rates for the unemployed: long form: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/02/the-link-between-unemployment-and-suicide/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/02/the-link-between-unem... Random paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277953693900353 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/02779536939...
tooltalk 9y ago
Let's not forget that the average age of Foxconn worker is only 23. According to (somewhat dated) WHO, that age group has the lowest suicide rate (http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/chin.pdf http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/chin.pdf) Number of suicides by age group and gender. CHINA (mainland, selected rural and urban areas*), 1999. Age (years) 5-14 15-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+ All Males 83 626 1357 1287 1196 1165 1325 1009 8048 Females 64 915 1937 1351 1186 1017 1273 1045 8788 Total 147 1541 3294 2638 2382 2182 2598 2054 16836 the same age group has the lowest suicide rates in other countries (eg, US) as well.
- fludlight 9y ago
  You should look at per capita suicide rates because populations are not distributed evenly by age group. Also, China in 1999 was a very different country so it's difficult to draw conclusions from this dataset about the situation there today.
  - tooltalk 9y ago
    Sure, I also accounted for the One-Child policy which started in 1979. It still supports the conclusion that the suicide rate is much lower for that age group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#/media/File:China_Sex_By_Age_2010_census.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China#/media/F...
- 123e1daAdfafsdf 9y ago
  Suicide is an especially sensitive death classification, and I would assume even moreso in a place like China. What is your opinion on the validity of these data?

jp_sc 9y ago

Doesn't Foxconn also manufacture products for many other companies? It doesn't matter because, at the end of the article: "This is an edited extract from The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone by Brian Merchant, published by Bantam Press (£16.99). To order a copy for £14.44 go to bookshop.theguardian.com"

msbarnett 9y ago
PlayStations, other cell phones, the nintendo switch,... They manufacture everything
briffle 9y ago
They recently announced they are going to build a huge $10Billion plant in Wisconsin to build LCD screens. (likely related to their Sharp acquisition)
- tapatio 9y ago
  Only if they get the massive tax breaks they are demanding.
  - ForRealsies 9y ago
    Not an uncommon practice for state governments luring new business.
  - derping69 9y ago
    a small slice of pie is better than all of a non-existent pie because the pie relocated to another state or country
    - nobodyorother 9y ago
      With the 3BN tax-dollar giveaway, Wisconsin will not receive any positive pie returns from Foxconn until 2043. Assuming Foxconn doesn't move on to another location in 2042. It's worth pointing out that Wisconsin is giving billions to a company where working conditions so bad that workers have been killing themselves there since 2010: "It wouldn’t be Foxconn without people dying."

afpx 9y ago

The only thing that I can add is an anecdote. Around 2000, I worked at a startup that was streamlining the globalization logistics for large manufacturers. One aspect of our software was a qualitative and quantitative rating system for factories in low-cost countries. One of our largest challenges was coming up with reliable scoring metrics that couldn't be gamed by the factories. Because Of this, we eventually had to resort to randomly sending physical auditors to factories. I wasn't part of that side of the business, but we had systems that allowed these auditors to enter data and notes. It wasn't uncommon for them to report on suicides. At the time, we didn't know much about Chinese culture beyond what we understood through movies and such, so we thought that 'suicide' was a euphemism for 'forced suicide'. Who knows - But, people would just disappear, at least at a seemingly higher rate in China than elsewhere. It was quite chilling.

matt4077 9y ago
Please note that the myth of a high rate of suicides at Apple's factories has been proven to be an invention.
- tajen 9y ago
  Given how many times it's been said and how sensible the question is, would you have a source for that?
  - jdietrich 9y ago
    It's simple maths. In the worst year for suicides, Foxconn had 14 deaths out of 930,000 workers. Divide one by the other and you get a remarkably low suicide rate by any standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides
    - vacri 9y ago
      It's not 'simple maths'. Those are 'on-campus suicides', not 'all suicides in the demographic'. Your own link also points out that suicides are mostly elderly rural people, which doesn't line up with the Foxconn worker demographic.

peterburkimsher 9y ago

I went to Shenzhen and worked for Egoman, a Chinese company that made the first batch of Raspberry Pis, before that manufacturing got moved to Wales. The dormitories look typical. I arranged to stay in one through a different friend; mine wasn't arranged by the company. Now I'm in Taiwan, and life is better here. Factories are newer and cleaner, and working hours are more sane. Chinese factories often set long shifts because there's nothing to do in the local area except work. Kaohsiung has much more local culture than Shenzhen, so the workers are more interested in time off, and happier for it. I've been here for 3 years to get the necessary work experience for future visas. I'm now considering other options, particularly New Zealand or Australia, where my girlfriend and I both want to go. Please ask me if you have any other questions, I'm willing to share my experiences.

breakbread 9y ago
Where are you from originally? What people usually do after their shift ends? Just return to their respective dorms? Are their any public spaces in or around the factory where people gather?
- peterburkimsher 9y ago
  I grew up in Geneva (born in Switzerland, parents live at France but work at CERN). But my passport is British by descent. I'm trying to go to NZ because it's the fastest way for me to get Permanent Residency. I can't have kids until I get PR, because British-by-descent only goes one generation. First I went to Xingda Hongye in Fushazhen, near Zhongshan, China. It's a long way outside the city, and there is seriously nothing to do nearby. There's a small café on-site, and people sometimes go for a walk down to the (polluted) river. Otherwise they hang out in the (male/female segregated) dorms, playing card games and watching videos online. A few people have laptops and play computer games. Some people also hang out in the cafeteria, or play some sports (ping pong is popular). There isn't a single social room though, so people just kind of scatter throughout the campus when they're off work. In Shenzhen, I stayed in a factory dormitory in Longgang, but was working in an office. It would take 20 minutes by bus to the nearest metro station (Universiade), which made it difficult to see my girlfriend at the time, because the bus would no longer run so late. I would go out to nearby restaurants to eat instead of staying in the company. There was a nice park nearby where I'd eat a bendon lunchbox. There was also a school, and some of the school kids were picking mangos from the trees on the side of the road to eat, for fun. They all wanted to take pictures with the handsome foreign boy, haha. All the people in Shenzhen are not local though - the city was purpose-built for electronics manufacturing, and people speak Mandarin instead of the local Cantonese because they come from all over. I made friends with a guy from Xinjiang (the Muslim separatist state) at a noodle shop, and he made some delicious noodles. The lack of Facebook and church made it hard for me to make many local friends though. QQ and WeChat are fine for one-on-one chatting, but hard to make Groups and Events. Another interesting thing to note is that many business owners (including my boss there) are Taiwanese. Despite the political tension, there are a few ways that Taiwanese can invest in the Special Economic Zone areas, and they do. Meanwhile in Taiwan, the workers mostly come from SE Asia (Philippines, Vietnam). That means the managers can speak much better English. The factory is inside a special compound (Nanzi Export Processing Zone), and does not include accommodation. There's 2 universities nearby, history going back about 400 years, and plenty of genuinely local people who are there to live, not just to work. After I leave work, I visit kids in the hospital with a Christian group, or study Chinese, or go to the CouchSurfing meetup. On weekends I go hiking, to music concerts (lots of indie rock here), hot springs, waterfalls, or church. There's a lot more happening here than in China, in my opinion.

teemo91 9y ago

How economically feasible is it to automate assembly? It looks like a lot of human suffering can be lessened if at least some parts of assembly are automated.

oneplane 9y ago
It's all perspective, just like (paid) child labor in some cultures. While west europeans and most north americans oppose child labor and slavery, in some countries and cultures it is only the 'lesser evil', compared to sex slavery/prostitution, starving to death or getting maimed to then beg for some pimp type of situation. Is the human assembly line ideal? No. But for many workers it seems that the alternatives in the rural areas are either non-existant or pretty bad.
simonh 9y ago
Have you ever been to the Chinese countryside? I have, my wife is Chinese. My wife's sister is disabled and married a man from the countryside, a common arrangement in China, so I have relatives from the country. Trust me, sending all those workers back home really isn't going to do an awful lot to reduce human suffering. They choose to go and take those jobs for good reasons. Many of the workers in those factories are women. After a few years, they often go back home as the wealthiest members of their families, with enough capital to build homes and start new businesses of their own. It's actually started a distinct demographic trend. People have all sorts of bizarre ideas about china. Sure the conditions in these factories are awful by western standards, but China isn't the west. The same basis for making decisions just don't apply. Hopefully they will one day, but we're not there yet.

maxk42 9y ago

38 suicide attempts among 450,000 workers would place Foxconn's suicide rate at lower than the general suicide rate across the US.

DanBC 9y ago
Yes, 38 per 450,000 people would be a bit lower than the current US rate. It's very hard to compare suicide rates internationally because different countries have different definitions, and the people who do the counting are not consistent. The US probably undercounts suicide. The age standardised rate is roughly 13 per 100,000 China definitely undercounts suicide.
dade_ 9y ago
Unless they are US veterans, which is 135 suicides per 450,000 per year.

mfrykman 9y ago

A friend of mine is an investigative journalist in China - he spent a while working in a helmet foam factory and living in a dorm such as the one in the article. He heard rumors that the Chinese mafia would pay workers to commit suicide at Foxconn in exchange for money for their family in the countryside. The mafia would then threaten suicide attempts as leverage to extort concessions from Foxconn. Not sure if it's true (was only a rumor), but certainly got me thinking about it from another perspective. Some of my buddy's work: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvwj3k/chinas-21st-century-eunuchs-v23-n3 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvwj3k/chinas-21st-centur... http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/roads/2015/09/xian_village_the_residents_of_an_ancient_village_in_southern_china_are_in.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/roads/2015/0...

dopamean 9y ago
Honestly, that sounds like a convenient rumor for Foxconn.

tziki 9y ago

One thing I always find chilling about stories like these is the description of work - specifically, how easily it can be automated. Very few people in western countries depend on jobs like these, but your average Chinese doesn't have much padding against automation taking away this type of jobs. Articles like these make me feel very lucky to have been born into a country which gives me enough opportunities to pad myself against obsolescence.

codyb 9y ago
I wouldn't say very few, driving is a large portion of many breadwinners duties whether they're cab drivers or truck drivers and those jobs will very shortly in the grand scheme of things be automated out. Tellers, and clerks are another big group of people who might be hit pretty hard by automation.
- rubidium 9y ago
  If the automated checkout at the grocery is any indication, truckers will be ok :)
  - colejohnson66 9y ago
    > truckers You mean checkers? Because with self driving cars somewhere around the corner, I could see truckers getting replaced with self driving trucks sometime in the future.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    I've been using automated checkout at Ralph's for a year now, couldn't be happier.
nomel 9y ago
> how easily it can be automated You're correct. Here's a story of them replacing 60,000 people in one factory. Just incredible! http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966

bwang29 9y ago

This is an extremely well written story, I kept imaging action scenes from thriller. But I kept wondering the legality of actually stepping into an iPhone fab without permission. As the journalists might be seen as given prior approval, what if they saw the new iPhone and how does journalism in here functions toward revealing information v.s. respecting policies. I also felt that the reason this article was written is only for partially humanitarian cause, but still largely trying to capture curiosities from readership, and the risks definitely seem to have paid off.

basicplus2 9y ago

Reason enough not to buy apple

emsy 9y ago
Apple is about one of the very few companies that at least have a program to check and improve working condition of their manufacturers. If you don't want to be a hypocrite, you've got to stop buying most tech all together.
simonbarker87 9y ago
Given how many products are made by Foxcon and all the companies similar to them you would be better off saying "reason enough not to by an electronic product"

Grustaf 9y ago

If they beat a journalist for taking photos from the outside, I'm quite worried what they'll do to the guard that let the author in.

Tanegashima 9y ago

As we all can see, we're narrowing the release of a new iPhone. An article from June gets reposted...

icu 9y ago

As consumers we have the power to vote with our wallet. I'm actually proud to say that the last Apple product I bought was the iPad generation 1 for these exact ethical reasons. I'd really encourage others to look at the companies they buy from and see if they align with your morals before making a purchase.

simonh 9y ago
What phone and/or tablet do you use? Clients of Foxconn include Amazon, Microsoft, Cisco, HP, Dell, Huawei, Nintendo, Sony, Toshiba, Motorola, Blackberry and many more. They don't just make iPhones. Next time you look at an XBox or Switch, guess where it came from? Do you know that workers prefer to work on the Apple lines because Apple has greater say in the factory conditions than the other clients and pays the workers on their lines more? When you looked into the companies you buy from, how far did that research go?
- icu 9y ago
  I use a Fairphone based on Ethical Consumer's research (http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/mobile/phonebroadband/mobilephones.aspx?mobileversion=true http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/mobile/phonebroadband/mobilep...) I still have my iPad Generation 1 as my use case for it is reading epub and pdfs and that hasn't changed since 2010. Also my ethical stance with regards too my consumerism is something I've been doing since 2014. Granted my laptop is a Dell XPS 15 9550 and while the machine itself is very environmentally friendly Dell's ethical practices leave a lot wanting but so do the other ultrabook manufacturers. In my line of work I am often client facing therefore I need form and function. I'm at least aware of the trade off and my eyes are open with regards to whom I'm supporting with my money. To answer your question about how far I go, I rely on Ethical Consumer a lot and my own internet searches before making a purchase. Of course I'm also on the lookout for reputable news articles that are focused on this area good or bad.
  - simonh 9y ago
    Well, personally I have no problem supporting highly sought after jobs in China, and industries that have helped raise hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and transformed the country into a modern advanced nation. If you'd seen what China was like the first time I went in 2001 and saw it again today, you might understand.