China's suicide factory.
Austin Ramzy reports on the underside of China's economic boom:
The massive Foxconn factory in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen is known for assembling famous electronic goods like Apple's iPhone and iPad. But in recent months it has gained a darker image, as a place where distraught workers regularly throw themselves to their deaths. The latest fatality came on Tuesday morning, when a 19-year-old employee died in a fall in the company's Shenzhen compound, according to the state-run Xinhua news service. He was the ninth worker this year to have died in a fall from factory buildings on Foxconn's properties in Shenzhen; two have survived suicide attempts, according to state-media reports. Another teenager, who the company revealed this month died after jumping from a company building in Hebei province in January, brings the total employee death toll from falls to 10 this year.
This is something you occasionally read about with respect to higher-level management in some Asian companies, but as Ramzy notes, the suicidal urge has struck lower-level factory workers, not the hyper-stressed upper management.
In other Chinese economic news, the Chinese steel firm Anshan is looking to invest in several U.S. facilities. Thomas Barnett thinks the Chinese are finally learning to play the game like the Japanese did:
I've told this story on China for a couple years now in the brief: Japanese cars used to be keyed in Indiana parking lots years ago. Why? This is Big 3 production territory. It doesn't happen today. Why? Toyota and Honda have IN plants now.
