“China doesn’t keep all the money paid for products made in China. Everyone in the supply chain shares.” I heard Zachary Karabell say this at the 2010 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.
Today, I read a post in Bind Apple that emphasized the fact that Apple products are made in China but didn’t mention that Apple also manufactures in the United States, Malaysia and Indonesia and other countries. The post also emphasized the sixty-hour workweek and low pay as if it were a bad thing.
In fact, Apple says, “Their products and components are manufactured by a wide variety of suppliers around the world. The final assembly of most products occurs in China.”
Most Chinese do not mind working sixty-hour weeks and the money earned may be low by American standards but is higher than most rural Chinese earn.
These factory workers also send money home and manage to save, since China’s average saving rate is 40%. China’s culture is based on Confucianism, which focuses on collective rights instead of the individual. Those workers are not working for themselves. They are working for their family and that includes parents and grandparents, who are contributing too.
Learn more about who Confucius was, or see what was going on at Apple’s Foxconn facility in Guanlan, China.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.
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