Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 19th Mar 2012 08:24 UTC
In the News Rob Schmitz, the Marketplace reporter who uncovered Daisey's lies, stated: "What makes this a little complicated is that the things Daisey lied about seeing are things that have actually happened in China: Workers making Apple products have been poisoned by Hexane. Apple's own audits show that the company has caught underage workers at a handful of its suppliers. These things are rare, but together, they form an easy-to-understand narrative about Apple." It's what I'm already seeing in the Apple-verse (and beyond): the actual issues that have truly and honestly happened are being shuffled under the carpet because some no-name dude I'd never heard of lied, as yet another way to soothe people's conscience. The west is exploiting workers in the east for a few percentages of profit margins. This is a reality, whether some dude lied about it or not.
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They realise that cheap isn't going to be their competitive advantage for long. They're working on a number of different ways to get around that:

- Value addition: Maybe you've heard of Huawei or Haier which are two Chinese brands. They're getting into branding now.

- Restricting raw material exports: The stuff that gets made in Indonesia or Thailand still needs raw materials that often get sourced from China. So the Chinese want reserve raw materials for their local manufacturers who export a more value added products.

Also they're investing in other countries that have raw materials they need and locking down the supply that way. You see a lot of that happening in Africa.

- Better infrastructure: China really wins on infrastructure. That is why they attract so many manufacturers.

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