Foxconn
This company, Hon Hai Precision Industry, Ltd. which trades as "Foxconn" has been in the news for the last few months regarding its manufacturing factory working conditions, especially in Shenzhen, China. Included in the reports and investigations are outrageously low pay scale, required overtime, and a slew of suicides by jumping from the top of the factory. Foxconn has plants on four continents - North America (Mexico), South America (Brazil), Europe (Czech Republic), and Asia (Malaysia, China and India). They make the beloved Apple IPads, AppleIPhones, and many parts for other companies like Dell, HP, Motorola, Microsoft, Amazon, Nokia, Acer and Sony. The U.S. accounts for 31% of Foxconn's business. This is a company with hundreds of thousands of workers per factory living in dormitory-style settings.
Last year, I hosted 11 students from China for two weeks. We spent almost every day together, learning English and going on field trips. They were from Guangzhou, southern China - about 2 hours north of Shenzhen. These kids were from single-child families and most were used to a certain standard of living which didn't include going to parks, or for that matter, touching the Earth, where they encountered things like spiders and ants. I took them to a Native American tipi and we passed around buffalo horn rattles and turtle rattles, which they were reticent to even hold.
The common element of these two seemingly unrelated issues is this:
When the teenagers were here, the most important thing they were assigned to do - from home - was to purchase IPads and IPods. Neither are available for sale in China. Even though workers are dying, separated from their families, and living in unimaginable conditions for any American worker, in China, their own homeland, they cannot obtain these very items they are responsible for providing to the rest of the world. According to an article posted at PCMag.com, it takes 5 days and 325 sets of hands to put together your IPad.
The conditions at Foxconn being publicly exposed first by Mike Daisy on This American Life (NPR) and then subsequently by The New York Times, BBC, and others, has created some changes in the way in which its workers are treated. However, the sterile nature of the factory and the sterile nature of these children I worked with leaves me completely confused about the Chinese culture.
Is the regimentation of Communist party-line politics an integral part of the personal standards of the People? Is having everything environmentally-controlled, from sanitary factory conditions to fear of touching natural objects a culturally-ingrained psychological compulsion?
I don't like stereotypes. I have friends of Chinese descent whom I love and admire. Cultural tendencies are identifiable sometimes, but what about those tendencies which are not flattering to one's culture?
Fighting Native American stereotypes is an ongoing issue. I suppose it is no different with the Chinese.
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