Dying for an iPhone : Dying for an iPhone

Dying for an iPhone : Dying for an iPhone
ISBN: 9781642591248
Publication Date: 1 September 2020

Apple and Foxconn epitomize the successful global corporations whose fortune rests on the transfer of industrial jobs from the United States to China since the 1980s. With one million workers in China alone, Taiwan-owned Foxconn is the world's largest producer of electronics goods notably for Apple, but also for Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Sony, Huawei and many other giants, having mastered the arts of the global supply chain. In contrast to the celebratory literature centered on the entrepreneurial geniuses of Silicon Valley, our story begins with the 18 known suicides by young Foxconn workers in 2010, resulting in 14 deaths. It explores what this reveals about the lives of a new generation of Chinese workers, the majority drawn from the ranks of nearly 300 million rural migrants who manufacture the electronic products we so prize but lead lives as second-class citizens. Probing the suicides takes us to an understanding of the interface of corporate power and the state that has made possible China's rise and the emergence of a powerful class of Chinese billionaires and a middle class. It also inspired labor protest that reflects the dilemmas of a new working class facing the power of corporations, the market and the state. Through first-hand interviews, poems and songs, the book reveals the life and death struggles of workers and teenage student interns. Dying for an iPhone provokes rethinking about the China Dream and about the possibilities of labor solidarity both within China and internationally at a time of increasing repression.