The exploitation in workshops that make consumer goods for the west is well known. The use of forced labor in China is in the Congressional record. After allegations of abuse, Apple investigated a factory in China making iPods and found abuses but not child labor.
What they did not do is to investigate the sources of the raw materials where China has “outsourced” its child labor to Africa. The rape of that continent for its mineral wealth is fast approaching the worst excesses of the 19th century European empires.
This is from the New York Times reporting of the Apple investigation
“We did find that the weekly limit on hours worked was exceeded 35 percent of the time, and so the supplier is changing its policy as a result of the audit,” an Apple spokesman, Steve Dowling, said. Apple said it limits the workweek to 60 hours, with at least one day off.
The Apple report, available on the company’s Web site, noted: “The team reviewed personnel files and hiring practices and found no evidence whatsoever of the use of child labor or any form of forced labor. This review included examining security records targeted at discovering false identification papers — an important check for companies serious about preventing illegal employment of any kind.”
Foxconn is the trade name for Hon Hai Precision Industry, a Taiwan-based company whose customers include Intel, Dell and Sony. The Foxconn manufacturing center in Longhua employs 200,000 workers, with Apple using about 15 percent of them, the report said.
These devices are dependent on supplies of copper and cobalt. The principle sources for these are the copper mines of Zambia and the Katanga province of Congo. Last Friday, Channel 4 in the UK broadcast a half hour documentary on these two areas in their “Unreported World” thread. The Chinese are spending some of the billions of dollars they get from Wal*Martland to buy up mines and processing plants ready to ship copper back to China for use in the electonics industry. While it is providing more jobs and investment, the downsides are considerable.
As much attention is paid to the African environment as to the Chinese where rivers are now dead. The reporter, Aidan Hartley, found heavy pollution in a stream by using simple ph test equipment:
(M)any Zambians also accuse the Chinese of being so focused on making money out of Africa that they do not care about the local people. The team are shown a cemetery where 46 victims of one of Zambia’s worst industrial accidents – an explosion at a Chinese-owned factory – are buried. Local residents accuse the Chinese management of failing to uphold safety standards. Other locals claim that the factory is responsible for environmental damage, and Hartley finds a stream heavily polluted by acidic effluent.
The situation in Congo is, if anything, worse. Open cast mines swarm with humans of all ages scraping at the earth to extract minerals.
Hartley and (his Producer, Tom) Porter are confronted with an apocalyptic landscape, in which many of the miners appear to be drunk or high on drugs, with fights frequently breaking out.
Worst of all, the team discover that a key aspect of the huge copper and cobalt mining industry is the exploitation of child labour. Many of the miners have to hand-dig tunnels into the hillsides, and because the shafts are small they use children to hack out the ore and shift sacks of rocks. When it rains, the tunnels are vulnerable to collapse and dozens of miners die every month. The children are also exposed to radioactivity, since this area is close to the uranium mines which supplied the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Around the mine, the team find dozens of Chinese brokers exploiting this chaotic environment by buying up the ore extract. They react violently when Porter tries to film them. Local villagers tell Unreported World that although the Chinese are bringing enterprise, their business practices are making a profit at a tragic human cost. But, they say, they have no alternative but to trade with them.
The film makes it clear that the Chinese intermediaries know that child labor is involved. Children turn up at their compounds to sell ore, despite notices banning under 18s. Worst of all, despite the rise in the price of these commodities to record levels, the miners themselves recieve a pittance. A bare few dollars for a day’s hard labor is typical.
It should be said that greed is not confined to the Chinese. A western company has exploited the law and recieved $15.5 million after demanding $55 million from Zambia for foreign debt it bought from Romania for $3.2 million. This is rightly dubbed a “vulture fund”.
It is not only Zambia and Congo that the Chinese are interested in. Sudan has oil which the Chinese are keen to exploit and this has a bearing on their votes at the UN over Darfur. It’s not only minerals. When a repressive regime has crops that the Chinese want, any consideration of democracy and human rights, or even human decency goes out the window. Al Jazeera reports on a Chinese aid package of $25million to Zimbabwe.
Jia Qinglin, a senior Chinese Communist party official, presented the equipment, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, to Robert Mugabe, the country’s president, on Saturday in a deal to replace equipment damaged when Mugabe’s government seized white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.
But China wants all the tractors to go to tobacco farmers and expects Zimbabwe to deliver 30 million kilograms by the end of the year, Haru Mutasa, Al Jazeera’s correspondent, said in Harare.
As much as 80 million kilograms of the crop is to be exported by the fifth year, Joseph Made, Zimbabwe’s minister of agricultural engineering and mechanisation, said.
The tobacco crop was 55 million Kg last year, down from 200 million Kg in 2000. The previously “landless blacks” will no doubt be obliged to grow tobacco for the Chinese rather than food for their families.
You will recall that Zimbabwe is facing a food crisis. Even a heavily censored Harare based newspaper admits the position:
Most parts of Matabeleland South and North, Midlands, Masvingo and Manicaland provinces would need food aid this year.
Government is currently importing 400 000 tonnes of maize from countries in the region to augment supplies at the Grain Marketing Board which has so far taken delivery of 563 000 tonnes of maize from farmers, much of it from the 2005/06 farming season.
Zimbabwe consumes at least 1,8 million tonnes of maize and about 450 000 tonnes of wheat per year.
The shortfall of about half the maize needs from the crop and imports (Zimbabwe use to be an exporter) should be met by aid but there are problems even there with threats to ban NGOs operating because of their “political interference”.
Meanwhile, tobacco farmers are effectively on strike as the government insists on pricing in accordance with the official exchange rate of $ZIM 250 = $1US when something like $ZIM 14000 can be obtained on the unofficial market.
ZIMBABWE’S annual opening of the tobacco auction floors hangs in the balance after Agriculture Minister Rugare Gumbo failed to get government approval for the new prices on Monday.
Tobacco farmers gathered Monday at a Harare hotel waiting for Gumbo’s announcement of new prices and incentives, but the ceremony was cancelled after nearly two hours, when Gumbo did not show up.
The scheduled opening of the tobacco floors Tuesday comes after its delay by more than a month as a result of a pricing dispute and inadequate packaging materials.
Neither are the Chinese having life all their own way. There have been protests in Zambia over the mines working conditions and this week Chinese scouting for oil in Ethiopia were killed by an insurgent group.