China Foxconn ..like a zombi

Sixty three days later: The “zombie” interns of Foxconn

Xiao Chen is a second-year computer science major at China’s North-western Polytechnic University in Xi’an. His internship this year, like that of many of his fellow students at North-western, was halfway across the country in the coastal city of Yantai working on the production line for Foxconn.
He described in an interview with Beijing Youth Daily his 63 day stint at Foxconn, working ten hours a day, six or seven days a week.  The work was tiring and monotonous and Xiao Chen said he ended up feeling like a “zombie” after weeks of high pressure, repetitive work with little rest. But he also expressed a measure of pride in his ability to assemble 1,600 units a day.
The basic pay was similar to that of regular workers at the factory, overtime was paid according to the Labour Law, and Xiao Chen said the dormitories were better than those at his school. However, his experience illustrates once again how vocational school students and even university students in China can be used by factories as a cheap and convenient source of labour and then sent back to school when no longer needed.
Xiao Chen’s Foxconn diary is translated in full below.