CUPERTINO, Calif. – Apple began last week by basking in record quarterly profits, but then ended the week in a public relations retreat after reports of exploited workers in factories in China assembling its hot-selling iPads and iPhones.
For now, the media spotlight is on Apple and its Taiwanese contract supplier Foxconn. But China's leaders will also be shifting uncomfortably as the gaze of the international media turns to the harsh underbelly of its manufacturing economy.
Behind China's remarkable economic progress toil an estimated 120 million migrant workers, typically living and working in austere factory complexes.
Two decades into China's industrial transformation, questions are being asked about how much responsibility authorities shoulder for its hukou (household registration) system that effectively institutionalizes migrant workers as second-class citizens in their own country.
But for now, it is Apple in the firing line. The New York Times ignited media interest after a story on unsafe working conditions, as well as seven-hour days and cramped dormitories at Apple's Foxconn supplier in China.
The public relations drubbing was ramped up another degree by Jon Stewart's Comedy Central, with a disturbing "Fear Factory" satire on the lot of the workers behind Apple's prodigious profits.
The problem for Apple is that beneath the humor and the shock headlines, there is enough truth about worker conditions in mainland Chinese factories to offend many of its customers and ultimately damage its premium brand.
