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The NGO report also cited another Meiko site in the Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone, located in Hubei province, also in violation of Chinese environmental laws.

Research found that residents have long been concerned about the growth of the production facility, as its wastewater discharge contains the heavy metals nickel and copper. Local investigation of the waste-water discharge found contamination in both a channel that leads to Nantaizi Lake and in the lake itself. A sample of the water tested by the Hongshan district's Wuhan Environmental Protection Bureau monitoring station was found to contain copper and nickel, and that the concentration of nickel was 11.15 times over the legal standard for water destined for human consumption. The report describes the lake as “an ash grey color with white bubbles accompanying groups of black floating objects.” The report notes that the contamination in the lake has spread to the Yangtze River, where the copper level is 56 to 193 times the normal amount. The amount of copper found indicates that the likelihood of harmful toxicity is very high.

Another known Apple supplier, Kaedar Electronics located in Kun-shan, Jiangsu province, holds the 2006 pollution record in the organization's Pollution Map Database for its excessive levels of untreated
wastewater discharge.
⁴²
Another facility in the region, Unimicron Electronics, owned by the Taiwanese Unimicron Group, is a suspected PCB supplier to Apple, and also holds a pollution record for 2005. Kaedar is noted to produce exteriors and interiors of notebook computers, which result in emissions from sprays used in the production process, while Unimicron emits acid gas and dust.

An audit found that, given the proximity to residential areas, even if Kaedar abided by official standards, their operations would still be disruptive to residents.
⁴³
Some residents reported that they have been living in fear of poisonous gases for six years. They do not open their windows because of this, and if they leave them open while sleeping, “they will wake in the middle of the night choking.” The report noted that Tong Haiyi, a student at a kindergarten that abuts the factory, said to his mother, “Sometimes when I come back home and I'm studying, I have chest pains, and when you come to fetch me, I feel really dizzy. Sometimes there is a really strange smell at school.” The mother noted that the child suffers from regular headaches, dizziness, and nose bleeds.

The report also noted that residents of nearby Tongxin Village explained that, prior to Kaedar Electronics coming to their area, their village was thriving. However, the facility consumed much of the arable land and blackened their previously clean stream. Residents noted a sharp increase in cancer rates since the facility was established, and said that when the state inspects the factory, the smell disappears— but it always returns. One villager, Zhu Guifen, had to have her stomach removed due to gastric cancer. The researchers reported that she and others fell to their knees and begged for help during the conversation. Following up on the cancer reports, the researchers found that more than nine people in a village of just sixty had contracted or died from cancer in recent years, while in the 197os only one person from the village died of cancer. Some residents have sent their children to live in other locations over fears for their health.

BEWARE OF CORPORATE WASHING

In early 2013, the coalition of Chinese NGOs released its third report, titled
Apple Opens Up: IT Industry Supply Chain Investigative Re
port.
⁴⁴
In it, they stated that in response to the pressure brought by the previous two reports, Apple has begun working with them and with third-party auditors to remedy some environmental problems in its Chinese supplier base. In a few cases, suppliers have made significant and satisfactory improvements, while in others more still needs to be done. The report noted that significant improvements to the wastewater management system were made at the Meiko Electronics facility described previously after the company agreed to an audit in April 2012. Action was also taken at Tripod (Wuxi) Electronic Co., Ltd., which had been identified in the previous report as a generator of massive amounts of hazardous waste, and a water-recycling program was instituted at Ibiden Electronics (Beijing) Co., Ltd., to significantly reduce water consumption at the PCB production plant. We emphasize, however, as does the report, that much of the supply chain remains unexamined.

On the labor side, the final installment of the
New York Times'
iEconomy series reported that targeted improvements in labor conditions had been made at one Foxconn site in Shenzhen.
⁴⁵
Yet, critics have pointed out that Apple's partnership with the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to provide auditing of labor conditions at Chinese suppliers raises serious questions, as the FLA was founded in part by leading corporations in the global garment industry to monitor themselves.
⁴⁶
Apple was also applauded by Gene Sperling, director of the US president's National Economic Council, when it announced in late 2012 that it would make some Macbooks here in the US in a move to bring production back home.
⁴⁷

While we praise Apple and these few suppliers for taking action in these cases, we point out that this level of response leaves much to be desired given the systemic nature of the problems in the supply chain. Given the scope of the issue, these moves strike us as a mostly symbolic response designed to protect Apple's brand, rather than a commitment to the well-being of Chinese citizens. For instance, although it is nice that Apple will create some US jobs for Macbook production, when over 70 percent of company revenue comes from iPods, iPads, and iPhones made in China, it is clear that this is not a substantive change in their production model.
⁴⁸
Further, while the “amenities” available to Foxconn workers have been touted in both
corporate and independent media, in 2010 workers reported such long hours that they are not able to swim in the Olympic-sized swimming pool onsite at one of the Shenzhen factories, and that they spend their lunch break in a crowd of over 400,000 trying to access the provided meals.
⁴⁹

Until Apple makes systemic changes in its economic and managerial relations with its suppliers, these targeted efforts will be nothing more than symbolic management of the company's public relations problem. The third NGO report stated that it would like Apple to do systemic and in-depth environmental audits throughout its supply chain, not just at the sites identified in the previous reports.
⁵⁰
They also call for Apple to take responsibility for checking China's Pollution Map Database for its suppliers who are in violation, to urge suppliers to publish discharge data regularly, and manage materials suppliers. In other words, they want Apple to be proactive instead of reactive in managing its supply chain. We add to this a call for systemic audits of labor conditions and Chinese labor law violations, and register our dismay that changes in this regard seem to have only been made at one Foxconn site, while abuses have been reported throughout the Chinese supply base. We applaud Apple for taking some baby steps in the last year to improve its deeply problematic supply chain, but we urge the company to give these long-term and systemic problems the committed and critical attention they deserve, and to recognize the company's role as the
driver
of these problems.

CONCLUSIONS

Through a comparison of US corporate media coverage and Chinese news, scholarly research, and NGO reporting, we found that the story of labor and environmental abuses happening at Apple suppliers in China has not been fully or truly told. The Western-centric and narrow focus of US coverage has done a disservice to Chinese workers and citizens, and to American consumers who still do not know the extent of the problems generated by our demand for Apple products. The collective sweeping-under-the-rug by corporate media of Mike Daisey's account, and the
New York Times'
celebration of recent changes at one Foxconn site suggest that Apple consumers have nothing to be
concerned about. Ira Glass even went so far as to suggest in the
This American Life
retraction that difficult labor conditions are to be expected in “industrializing” economies, and that ultimately all of this is benefitting the Chinese.
⁵¹
However, when the Chinese perspective is considered, it is clear that the benefits, if any at all, are few—and when the profits from iPhones and iPads are examined, we see that only the slimmest margin of economic benefit goes to the Chinese.
⁵²

Labor abuses in Apple's supply chain, and the social and psychological distress that follow, are not isolated to just one Foxconn facility, but are systemic, significant, and ongoing, and include enslavement of Chinese college students. China's migrant workers and their families are far from content with this situation, in which there is sometimes not even enough work to go around for all those who flock to the factory zones.
⁵³
They regularly express their dismay through resistance in the workplace, strikes, and broad-based labor rights campaigns, and in some cases, even express their dissent through suicide.
⁵⁴
And beyond the impacts on workers themselves, Chinese accounts illuminate the community-wide social impacts of the forced relocation of villages, the economic impacts of the razing of agricultural land, and the widespread and systematic destruction of the environment, which produce serious health problems and compromise the well-being of many.

As sociologists, we recognize that these problems in Apple's supply chain are typical of globalized production, and so too are Apple's targeted and mostly symbolic responses to critics.
⁵⁵
Symbolic response has historically proven to be a successful tactic when those in power seek to retain their power. For this reason, we urge readers to sustain the criticism of Apple and its suppliers, and to continue to press the company to make meaningful change in its supply chain. The fight for rights cannot be left to workers, because as has proven to be true in the garment industry,
⁵⁶
among others, Chinese workers can only push so hard for their rights in a globalized system in which factories can leave their country for cheaper labor pools elsewhere.
⁵⁷

In addition to the focused effects of Apple's globalized production system in China, we encourage readers to consider the chasm of global wealth inequality that these relations of production and trade yield. As we write this conclusion, news of Apple's massive tax avoidance
scheme has just come to light.
⁵⁸
Not only does Apple vastly undervalue the labor of those who make its products, thus ripping off the Chinese, the company also rips off American citizens to the tune of
$74 billion dollars
in avoided tax liability between 2009 and 2012.
⁵⁹
Most recently, as Isaiah J. Poole wrote for
Truthout,
Apple's cleverly financed $55 billion payout to shareholders was executed in order to avoid paying $9.2 billion in taxes for this year. Poole noted that had Apple paid that bill, all of the recent cuts to the federal budget known as “the sequester” would have been unnecessary.
⁶⁰
The way Apple does business is not just bad for the Chinese, it is bad for us and our nation.

We encourage readers who wish to stay up to date on these issues to follow the work of Fiona Tam at the
South China Morning Post,
who offers consistent, critical, English-language coverage based on firsthand accounts of workers and citizens.

NICKI LISA COLE, PHD
, is a visiting assistant professor of sociology at Pomona College in Claremont, California. She earned a PhD in sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara in 2011, and since then has been committed to the practice of a critical, public sociology. With a general focus on consumer culture and global production and trade, she is currently researching the brand power, supply chain, and financial structure of Apple, Inc. She is the founder and head writer of the blog
21 Century Nomad,
where she has written extensively on fair trade and ethical consumption.

TARA KRISHNA
is currently completing her final year at Pomona College, where she is studying sociology and public policy analysis with a focus on biology. Tara is inter-ested in the impact of globalization on environmental justice, collective action, media responsibility, and public health.

The authors wish to acknowledge Li Zhao for providing invaluable Chinese news media research and translation services, as well as localized insights into Foxconn's presence in China. Ms. Zhao is a native of Shenzhen and a student at Pomona College. We also thank Yi Luo and Dingyun Zhang for providing insider perspectives on Apple's presence in Shenzhen, Richard P. Appelbaum for tipping us off to Fiona Tam's excellent coverage in the
South China Morning Post,
and Christine Shearer for editorial assistance on an earlier version of this essay. Finally, we thank Andy Lee Roth for dedicated guidance, support, and editorial expertise throughout the writing process.

Notes

^1.
Keith Bradsher and Charles Duhigg, “Signs of Changes Taking Hold in Electronics Factories in China,”
New York Times,
December 26, 2012,
http://nytimes.com/2012/12/27/buisness/signs-of-changes-taking-hold-in-electronics-in-electronics-factories-in-china.html
.

^2.
See
Censored
story #16,”Sweatshops in China Are Making Your iPods While Workers Suffer,”
Censored 2012: Sourcebook for the Media Revolution,
Mickey Huff and Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2011), 91–93; and follow-up coverage in
Censored 2013: Dispatches from the Media Revolution,
Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth with Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012), 145–147 and 168–169.