We are like prisoners... We do not have a life, only work.

"Chinese labor is competing and slaughtering the US machines."

Sure, on the things that humans do better than robots, like sewing chumbies. My understanding is that china imports a whole lot of manufactured parts (computer chips, etc..) does the final assembly step (the one where humans can compete with machines) and exports the result. Some people say that much of our trade imbalance with china should be re-assigned to other countries that sell the chips to china, where they are assembled into a final product and sold to the US.

For example, I'm typing this on a Lenovo brand thinkpad; It was Assembled in China by a Chinese company.

But, the CPU is made by intel (and nearly all Intel fabs are in the first world, many of them in the US.) and the ram and SSD is made in Korea. The LCD was also made in Korea. I haven't taken apart the battery assembly (which was assembled in china) but it would not surprise me at all if the Lithium Ion cells and the controller chips were made in Japan. It seems to me, then, that most of what I paid for my Lenovo was not actually being paid to China; China was just the cheapest place to aggregate and assemble all the components.

As time goes on, there will be more and more things a machine can do better than a human can; that is why I don't think it's a problem for the US that china has dramatically lower prices for rote labour. You can't get a high school student to hand-craft a microchip, no matter how hard you work them.

The other thing about China is that there is a huge gap between unskilled work and skilled work. Much larger than here. I mean, here, there is maybe a 10x-20x (give or take) difference between the hourly rates of our lowest-skilled workers and our highest skilled workers (I mean, if you discount managers.) In China, this difference is much greater; The very skilled workers are paid at almost 1/3-1/2 global parity. I'm helping a Chinese friend set up a hosting company in China, and he tells me that he's going to need to pay close to the equivalent of USD$40K a year for a good software engineer. (I mean, someone with a masters or better.) I mean, that's a lot less than US rates, but it's not pennies. Hell, It's slightly more than I paid myself last year.

I think you are missing entirely the value of a cultural and societal system. The alternative to what is currently going on in China isn't a workers' paradise where everyone is happy with a middle class, 40 hour a week job. The alternative is a nation starving (Mao?). I think your view discounts the rubble that China has come out of and the place it is today entirely. I doubt many Chinese feel their parents were better of than they are.

As for prostitution, if the family doesn't need the money to eat and survive that is one thing, and actually based on the economic specifics going on there I don't actually think it's relevant. If they are selling their daughter for hunger/survival, well it really sucks but we with cushy lives forget that survival is actually the most important thing. In that case, sadly, the buyer is supporting the local economy. (hello downvotes...)

First, I never said that actions that are wrong become right because we do them. What I'm saying is that they are perfectly fine for us (or were fine for us in the period we transitioned to a capitalist system), and I do not see why they wouldn't be for these workers (I'm talking about the no phone, keeping finger nails short, searches while leaving factory etc, not the sexual intimidation - see below).

Secondly, I can't comment on how much money the guy from the article is making or how much purchasing power that represents. However it does seem that he needs to support not only himself, but also his parents, plus save up for a bride price, a practice itself instigated by years of dysfunctional demographic control policies. I would estimate that only the top 20 or so percentiles of youth in their 20's in the West make enough money to support themselves, their parents AND save up for a significant expense. (I'm not very familiar with the current marriage market in China but I've read that in some areas prices of $5000 are being paid. That would represent several years worth of (average) salary. How many people in their 20's in the West do YOU know who can save up 150k in a few years?) So all in all the elevated need for income seems to come from externalities. While unfortunate for this worker, and I sympathize with his hardships, I think no reasonable person will argue that he should be paid according to his 'need' (use of vocabulary of a certain flawed economic system intentional)

Again, I'm not saying that because 'we' (Westerners) have something that that makes it right; but again in this case, it seems like this guy faces the same challenge that many young people in the West face, and while many of us like to complain (myself included), I would not argue that this is imposing 'inhumane conditions' upon us.

Then, about the work safety regulations - fining people for getting hurt is not right. The article does seem though like they had to go out of the way to find an example of such an instance. On top of that, not only the worker was fined, also the management, and the worker was re-hired. Still no excuse for unsafe working conditions, but again if this is the worst example they could find, I'd say they're doing quite OK. We can't really tell from the article if it's really unsafe, and I have a hunch the author would've let us know if he knew just one more way to make it seem like a horrible factory.

Lastly, the sexual harassment. For this, too, there is no excuse; on the other hand, it's quite easy for something to be labeled 'sexual harassment' nowadays. The article only says "Some security guards sexually harass the young women, often using very provocative language." which seems to suggest that in the most extreme cases, they use "very provocative language". Again without details this is hard to judge but it hardly seems to be the daily gang rape that the rest of the article suggests it is.

(Let me be clear, for the record, that no form of sexual harassment, in any place or form, is ever OK. However there are gradations of sexual harassment and my point is that from what we can tell from the article, the worst that happens is in the same class of behavior as mild picking on a colleague - not acceptable, but not the worst either, in the broad moral spectrum).

So in closing (at last...), my original point still stands. If the facts in the article (of which there are few, in between all the rhetoric) are correct, and if these facts are interpreted in context, even when contrasted with so-called 'advanced nations', there seems to be very little that is out of the ordinary (if not up for some improvement, as is the case anywhere), and certainly not as "dehumanizing" or exploitative as the author wants to make us believe.

(sorry for the long ramble :) )

Hey, you are the one proposing a limit of 45 hours - which is HALF of what you cite here, and which would take away the fat from many people's incomes not only in China but in Europe & the US as well. I guess that the next thing you're going to say will be that the limit should be at 50 or 60 or 70 or whatever - I say, let people make their own damn choices. If these people are being whipped into working 90 hours weeks, I'd be all against it; in fact I think that a democratic regime overthrowing a dictatorship that oppresses its citizens like that is morally perfectly fine. But as long as nobody is made to do anything, I don't see the problem. In fact if you give this guy the choice between working 90 hours in a factory for a few years and subsistance farming for the same amount of time and still being afraid that you'll starve because of a drought, too much rain, locust plague or whatever, he wouldn't have to think too hard or long.

They are not prisoners for the simple reason that they can quit at any time.

If they choose to stay at the job it means it's because they want to - by definition they want the money more than they want to leave the job, otherwise they'd leave.

If anyone wants to go there and provide better opportunities to lure these workers away from Microsoft, they are free to do so. There is a market for labor just as with any other product. But until then, Microsoft is offering these people the best job at the best wage available to them, so we have no grounds to criticize.