[Eug Wanker]

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1815





This should come as no surprise. This is par for the course for many Chinese industries. Basically, most of China's factories/hotels/restaurants, etc are staffed by people who come from the countryside. The business gives them a place to stay, which is often like a military barracks type of place, and provides them with a salary. They don't make much, but enough to pay for their room and board (if it's not already covered by their workplace), and usually they still have enough to send money back home to their families.

[Kerrigan]

Apparently, 200m people in China live on less than $1 a day, and 900m live in poor rural areas.

http://www.state.gov/s/d/rem/53682.htm

I read in the WSJ a while back that 900 million people in China make $1 a day on average.

No matter how you slice it, its depressing.

[Eug Wanker]

Indeed. That's why they leave the farms in Western China and go to the cities in Eastern China. Even if they're only making $5 a day, it's still way more than they would have made if they had stayed home.

[ironknee]

last time i was in china, it was in july of 1989...1 month after the crackdown.

it sure looks different now...

[Eug Wanker]

Ars: iPod City: Apple criticized for factory conditions

[Eug Wanker]

Digitimes: Foxconn sternly denies iPod sweatshop claims

:The British newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, last week claimed that iPods were being made in Chinese factories by employees working in "slave" conditions. The paper alleged that one factory at Longhua -- a town just outside the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen -- employed 200,000 workers, each of whom had to work 15 hours a day for a monthly pay of US$50. The paper said the workers lived in rooms which housed 100 people each.

However, Ding pointed out that Foxconn has a workforce of only about 160,000 employees worldwide, excluding ones with its handset-making arm Foxconn International Holdings (FIH).

He maintained that Foxconn, as an international company, abides by the employment law in China, which stipulates that the minimum wage for a worker in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone is 810 yuan (US$101) a month, and 700 yuan outside the special economic zone, Ding added.

The company also has been actively making improvements to workers' living conditions, providing safe and well-equipped dormitories complete with free laundry service, sports facilities, libraries, and other facilities, the spokesman said."

Hmmm... US$101 a month is actually a bit less than I thought they'd be making. I had thought closer to $5 a day, 6 days a week, which would be about US$130 per month. ie. I had thought they would make around 1000 元 per month (ie. more than minimum wage), not 810.

Guess not. That's less than $4 a day.

BTW, for context, a coffee at Starbucks in China costs almost as much as a coffee at Starbucks in the USA. So, a speciality coffee there might be close to the amount of an entire day's salary of a Foxconn iPod worker.

OTOH, 6 people can eat extremely well at a local "mid" end restaurant, with beer, for about US$20 total. And a local fast food meal is much, much cheaper. When I was visiting there, I'd get local Chinese takeout, and it was much better quality and much cheaper than going to a place like McDonald's.