[Bernard]

A recent WSJ article I saw said that Apple has over 300,000 employees in China. That's a lot of Social Security, Medicare Tax, US Federal and State Income Taxes, and related economic potential that is not in this country.

Just like you have to wonder why we buy oil from people who hate us and want to kill us, why do we buy cell phones from people who want to bug our phones, gain secrets etc? American companies who want to sell to American customers should pay Americans to build their stuff.

[Swordmaker]

A recent WSJ article I saw said that Apple has over 300,000 employees in China. That's a lot of Social Security, Medicare Tax, US Federal and State Income Taxes, and related economic potential that is not in this country.

No, Apple has very few employees in China. Contract manufacturers have employees in China who work for them. They contract with Apple and other consumer electronic firms to make almost all of the world's electronic products. FoxConn and Pegatron are the two largest of these contract electron assemblers. FoxConn is the largest of them all and has over 500 contracts with name brands of which Apple is just the largest.

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.'s subsidiary FoxConn Technology Group assembles approximately 60% of the consumer electronics in the world according to numerous sources including Wikipedia and the New York Times. Here is a partial list of 52 of FoxConn's largest customers I've been able to compile from news articles where their contractural relationships were mentioned over the past several years, which include the period when the suicides occurred:

• Acer Inc. (Taiwan)
• Alcatel (France)
• Amazon (United States)
• Apple Inc. (United States)
• Archos (France)
• ASRock (Taiwan)
• Asus (Taiwan)
• Barnes & Noble (United States)
• BenQ (South Korea)
• Blackberry (Canada)
• Cisco (United States)
• Dell Inc.(United States)
• EVGA Corporation (United States)
• Fujitsu (Japan)
• GE Thomson
• Google (United States)
• Griffin Technologies (United States)
• Gründig Mobile (Germany)
• Hewlett-Packard (United States)
• HTC (Taiwan)
• Huawei (China)
• Intel (United States)
• IBM (United States)
• Kyocera Communications (Japan)
• Lenovo (China)
• Lenovo/Motorola Mobility (China)
• LG Lucky GoldStar (South Korea)
• Microsoft (United States)
• Microsoft MSI (Taiwan)
• Motorola Communications (United States)
• NCR (United States)
• NEC Casio Communication (Japan)
• Netgear (United States)
• Nintendo (Japan)
• Nokia Oyj (Finland)
• PackardBell (Netherlands)
• Panasonic (Japan)
• Philips (Netherlands)
• Pioneer Electronics (Japan)
• Samsung (South Korea)
• Sanyo (Japan)
• Sharp (Japan)
• Siemens (Germany)
• Sony (Japan)
• TCL Communication Technology (China)
• Telefunken (Germany)
• Thomson (France)
• Toshiba (Japan)
• Vizio (United States)
• Xiaomi (China)
• Zoostorm (New Zealand)
• ZTE (China)

[Swordmaker]

In addition, FoxConn alone now has over 1.5 million employees spread among 29 manufacturing plants. It is not a Chinese company, but rather a Taiwanese company operating in China.