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What Apple has going for it here is the fact that it has Foxconn as a key manufacturing partner, which is a huge employer in China. That may give it some po
by pjin 15y ago
What Apple has going for it here is the fact that it has
Foxconn as a key manufacturing partner, which is a huge
employer in China. That may give it some political power.
Foxconn is a Taiwanese company. That doesn't count as "political power" in China.
- czhiddy 15y agoFoxconn employs over a million Chinese citizens. They undoubtably have enormous amounts of guanxi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi) with all levels of the government, from local to national.
- pjin 15y agoI am familiar with how China operates. Being close with the govt/CCP in China is standard practice. So you must also be aware that Foxconn has come under very intense media scrutiny in _China_ since a couple of years ago. Consider this sequence of events: [1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/Foxconn-Sues-Two-Journalists-for-Disclosing-the-Poor-Working-Conditions-34226.shtml http://news.softpedia.com/news/Foxconn-Sues-Two-Journalists-... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Chinese_labour_unrest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Chinese_labour_unrest [3] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/business/global/07foxconn.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/business/global/07foxconn.... Of course this observation doesn't depend on Foxconn being Taiwanese. But the two are not necessarily unrelated given the increasingly nationalist trajectory of Chinese policy. And more in response to the nature of Foxconn's guanxi with the govt, no amount of it can save Foxconn from uniform wage increases or increasingly negative _Chinese_ media coverage.