Love that slave labor. Love handing manufacturing technology to our enemies even more.
This is no slave labor. Foxconn is the largest EMS company in the world, employing about 600,000 people and dwarfing second largest in the industry, Flextronics of Singapore. Their tech and assembly employes are generally well compensated, by Chinese standards.
Most factories in Shenzhen are recently built and are state of the art, providing manufacturing for companies like Sony, Panasonic, Apple, Lotus / TCL or even better models for no-name or less familiar brands’ “clones”.
Some of the suicides were related to investigations of one lost iPhone, some to being overworked due to overtime (in some cases 80 hours/mo instead of allowed 40 OT hours/mo) due to Apple’s delays in rolling out some models of iPhone and pushing out iPad production...
The small mini-wave of suicides in China’s large industrial / financial centers (like Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing) and, specifically, at Foxconn is not related to “slave” or “cheap” labor, but rather exactly opposite - rising standard of living leading to real-estate and stock prices bubble in recent years which is in the process of deflating amid slowing growth rates of economy.