Tag: China

The New York Times Exposes Apple, Foxconn, and the 2 Percent

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment
Tim Cook, Apple COO, in january 2009, after Ma...
Tim, you can fix this in an instant. Stop subsidizing the human cost of your devices.

In this case, the 2 percent refers to this:

Fortunately for the bottom line, the touch-screen hungry public doesn’t seem to mind: “In a national survey conducted by The New York Times in November, 56 percent of respondents said they couldn’t think of anything negative about Apple. Fourteen percent said the worst thing about the company was that its products were too expensive. Just 2 percent mentioned overseas labor practices.”

So, 2 percent of people responding to that November survey had the dangerous conditions in the Apple production line on their radar.  Hopefully, that’s starting to change. Unfortunately, conditions on the ground in China aren’t.  Read the NYT‘s huge, detailed portrait of these conditions, published yesterday, here.  Thanks to New York Magazine for the heads up.  Thanks to Mike Daisey for putting this on America’s moral agenda.  We’ve been talking about it here for over a year.  When I wrote an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook on The Huffington Post after Steve Jobs’ passing, I didn’t know that one of Cook’s former gigs at Apple was “guy in charge of finding the cheapest production lines possible” and “guy who found Foxconn.”  Still, Tim, the challenge stands.  Change Apple’s ethics abroad, and create your own Apple legacy now.

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Deconstructing Biden

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment
Vice President Joe Biden L'68
"I thought the OCP referred to the maximum number of children allowed per sweatshop/workcamp. My bad!"

“The fact that one can no longer discern when reforming entitlements was easy and when it was difficult and whether or not the super committee is more likely to make things better or worse is a measure of just how awesomely dysfunctional our system has become. Fortunately, we have an easier-to-grapple-with “Biden gaffe” to distract us!”  (Jason Linkins today on Huffington).

The gaffe in question is, on one level, Biden’s “understanding” and “not second-guessing” China’s forced one-child per family law (also known as the exact opposite of freedom). But as Linkins points out, the whole thing goes far deeper and is much sadder.

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China’s Comedy Noir: Doublespeak, Sweatshops, and the Shenzhen Electric Bicycle Ban

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

On last night’s broadcast, Conan did a really funny faux-awards show for his audience. When the ridiculous Journey tribute band started singing about 6-year-old Chinese factory workers, the first thing I thought was, “okay, that shit is real and  shouldn’t be joked about.”  Then I thought, “well, actually, the fact that it’s real maybe means it should be joked about.”   Then Larry the Cable Guy said he was glad the band mentioned child labor in China because yesterday was, in fact, a big holiday there: Solstice? No. Take Your Parents To Work Day.  And so of course people laughed, but were they laughing because they thought the satirizing of Chinese practices (which produce most of our everyday goods at Wal-Mart prices) was good and funny or because of how gruesomely incongruous these things are with the values we claim to uphold? It’s our nature to laugh at things that aren’t funny, to meet uncomfortable, damning juxtapositions precisely in this way.  Some people laugh at funerals.  Some people laugh when they’re nervous or afraid or just unsure about what’s coming next.

On the artist’s side of this equation, is there a fine line between exploitative comedy and satire, or is that line bold and clear?  And do jokes like these make audiences more sympathetic or callous towards the people suffering injustice?  I don’t have an answer for that.  Conan is very smart and, by all accounts, a man with great integrity.  I’m going to assume his staff was aiming for some critical thinking with the bit, but are they at fault for culling low-brow guffaws as well?  I don’t know, but the conversation about the ethics of comedy is worth having.

Speaking of China and gruesome incongruity: it was in the news yesterday that  police in Shenzhen are beginning to enforce a ban on electric bicycles because they’ve been deemed a public safety hazard.  As Evan Osnos wrote on The New Yorker’s blog yesterday: “The bikes, which are dangerously silent, have thrived in a regulatory netherworld between bicycles and cars, and they are said to have caused more than fifteen per cent of the traffic accidents in Shenzhen last year, in which sixty-four people died and two hundred and thirty-three were injured.”

Fine, Shenzen.  Take away the People’s Democratic Modes of Transportation And Hence Livelihood.  Wait, what?  Shenzhen sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  Yes, that’s right! That’s the same region where working conditions in the factories producing most of our electronic devices are notoriously egregious, isn’t it?  Yes, yes it.

If you’re keeping score:

Dangerous Bikes: Bad

Inhumane Conditions so Westerns Can Have Cheap Goods:  Yeah, we’ll allow it.

I wrote a post a few months ago about writer and storyteller Mike Daisey’s work on this issue.  I urged folks to go read and listen to Mike’s personal experiences with Shenzhen workers as shared on TechCrunch, here.  I’ll urge it again.