Gilbert B. Kaplan, “Former Deputy Assistant and Acting Assistant Secretary of the U. S. Department of Commerce” wrote an editorial on the Huffington Post titled “Let’s Move the iPad Back to America“. His article was stupid in the extreme. His article was a political commentary, and as such, was written in a way to influence people without enlightening his readers to other facts which Mr. Kaplan was probably aware of. Unless Mr. Kaplan is unaware of the facts, in which case then basically the whole article was not just political but also stupid.
When I saw the article today, May 30th, I started to prepare a post about why Mr. Kaplan’s comments are both wrong and hypocritical. However, Kai Pan of China/Divide already finished his post about the Huffington Post article. And as usual, Kai Pan wrote more, and better, than what I would have accomplished. (China/divide seems to be blocked in China now… Kai Pan, if this gets to you via trackback, I just got to say I hope you change your IP address so that I can visit your great site.) So instead of writing about why Mr. Kaplan is wrong, here I will just summarize Mr. Kaplan’s article, and focus on the areas which China/Divide did not cover in its response.
The main point of Mr. Kaplan’s post IS NOT in the introduction, where he says that Apple has a responsibility to move production out of China for various reasons. I won’t go into his corporate ethics “main point” in the introduction; its to hypocritical for me to digest. And anyway corporate ethics is not really the point of the article. That starts in the second paragraph:
Let’s first look at what’s gone wrong at Foxconn, the sprawling subcontracting plant where iPads and other high tech products are made in Shenzhen, north of Hong Kong. Let’s look at the most fundamental point first, at least as it relates to the United States. That is that the workers at Foxconn’s plant are paid $130 a month. Assuming that they work four fifty hour weeks a month, this translates to a wage of 65 cents an hour. That is basically a slave labor wage, at least as compared to the wages in western markets where the iPad is sold. How can we continue to tolerate a trading system that not only allows this, but in fact encourages it? It is true that workers in China seem to want these jobs because the alternative is even worse, but even that conclusion has now been thrown into doubt. If it’s such an ideal career path, why have ten workers thrown themselves off buildings at the Foxconn plant (nine died and the other suffered severe injuries), why have their been reports of security guards abusing workers, and why has the work been described as relentless, as “making people numb,” as turning them into machines?
This is called China bashing. He went from talking about Foxconn to implying that Foxconn’s situation is representative of China’s work environment.
Without any evidence, Mr. Kaplan blames the suicides on Foxconn. My goodness… I don’t want to defend Foxconn. But at this time, to blame suicides on the Taiwanese manufacturer is wrong. Its certainly not right to blame the suicides on work which “makes people numb”. Monotonous work is the norm at most factories…particularly contract manufacturing services companies. However, I’m pretty sure a lot of farm work – where about 50% of China works – is very monotonous as well. You know what is another really numbing work? Busing tables in a restaurant where Mr. Kaplan eats with other politicians. The average American “bus-boy” will have a lot more dangers and difficulties in life than the Foxconn employee who can send most of his / her entire wage home to support his family while his own living expenses are paid for.
Mr. Kaplan may have met with lobbyists from the American Chamber of Commerce, who would have informed him and complained about the effects of China’s Labor Law, which gives far more protections to Chinese workers than American workers have. Of course, the law often goes unenforced. Recent articles about Foxconn point to the problem of unenforced laws. I have heard from many Chinese people about this lately. Many of them believe that Labor Union at Foxconn is probably corrupt. I have also heard many people say that the security guards at Foxconn are all mafia-types who may have murdered or bullied-to-death the suicide victims. That’s all just rumor, but it does follow a certain logic; without some internal police force to keep workers in line, what is there to prevent labor strikes from occurring in Foxconn’s “mega-factories?” Anyway, its clear that Foxconn has management “issues”, but not all factories in China have corrupt production managers which take bribes from their own operators, like what appears to take place at Foxconn. Most foreign-owned manufacturers in China do not have mafia running the corporate security services. Mr. Kaplan misleads his readers by implying that Foxconn’s issues are the norm in China-based manufacturers. .
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