在中国，工厂工人所面临的困境在于电子产品的大量需求，西方市场流行于将大量订单倾销至某一信赖或者新开辟的厂家。例如，苹果手机这样的电子产品指定由某第三世界劳工工厂代为制造。这一案例“苹果产品的大批量生产计划”或许是外包事务的信号灯，其中，中国作为巨大的获益者，至少在劳动力市场这一块来说是这样的，反对外包产业的声音依旧存在。
而反对之声具体表现在了若干暴动事件上，包括这周早些时候在富士康太原工厂发生的骚乱。据报道称，这次骚乱事件“是由几个员工之间的争执引发，进而导致事态升级的”。尽管富士康宣称此次涉及2000人的骚乱和工厂无关，来自华尔街的记者却发现大部分工人的不满情绪都是来自于工人与近乎没有人情的保全之间的对立。
“短短几年的时间，工人的抵触情绪从一开始的保守姿态逐步变得有攻击性”，来自中国Cornell大学专门研究劳工发展方向的学者这样说。“看上去，似乎仍就是些小事情引发的暴动或者骚乱，以及一些司空见惯的对于资本家的愤怒。反而是沿海地区出现了劳工缺口转移的现象，从更深层次中反应了近些年中国在架构上的转移，以及未来劳动力需求的走势。”
位于纽约的中国非政府组织的劳工观察机构，其创办人李强表示：“捍卫自己利益的意识有了很大的进步”，这是现在劳动人群的显著标志，而愤怒和不满则转而以一种直接的方式频繁发生，一如西方目前对于电子产品需求的成倍增加。
“他们也许不是很清楚自己在过去享有哪些权益，但是至少现在也开始真正的在关注其中的一些事务，”李强这样介绍说，这可能是因为中国目前的劳动力和市场依然很年轻、性急，与那些过去的佼佼者以及前辈相比显得更为有活力。
在过去十年当中，劳动者有了更多的话语权，他们也开始关注并寻求薪资上的增涨、办公环境的改善，并注重参加工会等组织。李强解释说，总得来说罢工和骚动的抗议行动存在于“未注册和临时的”一些地方，这些现象并不会在第一时间有个明确的成效。尤其是在很多极端的例子里，一旦非政府机构未能解决劳动者所提的要求，就会出现这些劳动者在大街上游行，阻碍交通之类的集会，甚至极端的会攻击警察局。
目前，中国家庭夫妻双工资的增涨能维持在14%。
从某些程度上来说，他们取得了一定的成效：比如说富士康这样的，在近些年，他们的双工资保持在14%的增幅上下，同时能保持双休的工作时，一周工作5天。员工都在积极争取更多的参与到公司的各个领域，而行业的声音也呼吁不应该裹足不前。
在这些既定的成绩面前，问题仍然是工厂作业上的压力以及现实的残酷考验。对于工厂员工来说，在被定义为暴力反抗保全和超时工作重压下可能面临的崩溃，还是会期待着生活条件、工作环境的改善。
近期的一份调查报告中显示，关于富士康事件，在采访了那些肇事的员工后，传统的声音还是在这次事件中占据了一定的上风。
事实上，暴力并不能解决问题。单从薪资上来看，富士康公司给员工的薪资明显高于绝大多数电子制造公司。在西方媒体眼中，苹果则凭借其强大的实力几乎占据了中国大部分市场以及媒体的好评。尽管在实用性上产生了很多争议，但是它依旧可称得上是商业品牌操作中的楷模。
这个月的早些时候，中国劳工观察公布了一项未完全报道的关于“员工抗议”的相关调查：就在上个月，报道组报道了面临和富士康情况相似的HEG电子产品生产商的一份记录。作为三星，摩托罗拉，以及LG的供应商，HEG因为其良好的口碑，很少被曝光于全球劳动和人权组织机构，也公布了在广东VTech工厂发生过的因人权而起争执引发的骚乱记录。
伴随着全球经济的一体化与低谷期，作为供职于外企的中国白领势必将成长为广大中国劳动者当中新颖的闪光点，并且成为与发达国家经济接轨的先锋力量，而短视和急躁很可能变成可预期的缺点。“在现今的中国，各行各业的从业人员都拥有了更多的才能与技能，也就意味着他们拥有了更多的选择范围以及事故几率的增多。”Friedman的报告是这样说的，“中国工作者正在面临着和西方劳动者同样的竞争压力，以及生存的人情世故。”
In China, the hardships faced by factory workers tasked with the production of high-demand electronics like the iPhone have long been a reference point for popular Western perceptions of third world labor. But even Apple's mass-produced objet d'art, commonly regarded as the foremost symbol of outsourced manufacturing, sits small against the large and complex backdrop of China's dramatically evolving labor landscape.
The riots which roiled Foxconn's Taiyuan factory earlier this week are undoubtedly part of that evolution. The turmoil was originally reported as having escalated from "a personal dispute between several employees." But despite Foxconn's claims that the 2,000 person revolt was "not work-related," a Wall Street Journal report found many workers citing general dissatisfaction and high tensions between workers and the factory's brutal security guards as cause for the violence.
"Worker resistance has gone from defensive to offensive."
"In just a few years, worker resistance has gone from defensive to offensive," writes Eli Friedman, a scholar of China at Cornell University's Department of International and Comparative Labor. "Seemingly small incidents have set off mass uprisings, indicative of generalized anger. And ongoing labor shortages in coastal areas point to deeper structural shifts that have also changed the dynamics of labor politics."
Li Qiang, founder of New York-based NGO China Labor Watch, says "a growing sense of protecting their own rights" is what distinguishes today's laborers, whose anger and dissatisfaction have become far more apparent as demand for high-ticket electronics in the West continues to increase exponentially.
"They might not [have] realized what kind of rights they could enjoy in the past, but are now gradually [becoming] aware of such issues," wrote Qiang in an email. That's due in part to the fact that China's current workforce is generally younger, brasher, and more optimistic than their stoic and resigned forebears.
Over the past decade, labor strikes in China's electronics manufacturing sector have become commonplace, and workers have begun actively demanding higher wages, better working conditions, and even representation within China's state-run labor unions. Qiang says that strikes are “unorganized and temporary,” and typically don’t have any immediately discernable effects. But in more extreme cases, when the purposely ineffective legal system has failed them, workers have taken to streets, blocked off major highways, and even attacked police stations to protest unfair treatment.
"China has seen annual double-digit wage increases hovering at 14%"
In some ways, they've been successful: in companies like Foxconn, the country has seen annual double-digit wage increases hovering at around 14 percent in recent years, and the work week in at least one major factory has been reduced to only five days. Workers are now seizing the opportunity to level the playing field even further, voicing demands that earlier generations would not have dared to make.
But despite all this, day-to-day factory life remains cruel and oppressive, and many workers, despite being subject to thuggish factory security guards and long, grueling hours of (often unpaid) compulsory overtime, still make just barely enough to cover living costs within the factories' massive, city-like dormitories. A recent report from labor watchdogs Students Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) found many of these old abuses to be the norm at Foxconn after interviewing employees outside factory grounds.
"Fixation on Apple overshadows vast and far more egregious abuses"
It's worth noting, however, that Foxconn gives employees dramatically higher wages when compared to the majority of electronics manufacturing companies. In Western media, the Apple brand is frequently a honeypot for coverage on China's labor issues. But the fixation often overshadows vast and far more egregious abuses that are still the norm elsewhere within China's colossal manufacturing sector.
Earlier this month, China Labor Watch published a far more damning yet comparatively under-reported investigation which found "severe labor abuses" including use of child labor at factories owned by Samsung. The previous month, the group reported similar conditions at HEG Electronics, a supplier for Samsung, Motorola, and LG. Even less reported was a release from the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, which revealed a laundry list of human rights violations at a VTech factory in Guangdong.
With the global economic slowdown, long-held Western perceptions of Chinese workers — as inhabitants of a some other plane, forever consigned to toil for the benefit of developed nations — are seeming increasingly short-sighted and inaccurate. "By depicting Chinese workers as Others — as abject subalterns or competitive antagonists — this tableau wildly miscasts the reality of labor in today’s China," writes Friedman. "Chinese workers are facing the same brutal competitive pressures as workers in the West, often at the hands of the same capitalists."
