In an email reportedly sent to Apple's 60,000 or so employees, Tim Cook, the company's chief executive said that Apple "cares about every worker in its supply chain". The letter appears to be in response to a series of articles in the New York Times cataloguing the company's problems in China and divisions within Apple about how to handle the issues.

IN AN industrial zone near Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in south-west China, a sign colourfully proclaims the sprawl of factories to be a “delightful, harmonious and happy district”. Angry steelworkers must have winced as they marched past the slogan in their thousands in early January, demanding higher wages. Their three-day strike was unusually large for an enterprise owned by the central government. But, as China’s economy begins to grow more sedately, more such unrest is looming.

La población urbana es por primera vez mayor que la rural en China, un cambio histórico que tendrá grandes consecuencias sobre la fuerza laboral en la llamada fábrica del mundo y someterá a una fuerte presión a los servicios sociales, el transporte y el medio ambiente en las ciudades, según los expertos. En 1949, cuando Mao Zedong proclamó la República Popular China tras vencer a los nacionalistas de Chiang Kai-shek gracias al apoyo de las masas agrarias, el 89% de la gente vivía en el campo. En los 30 años que siguieron, esta cifra solo bajó ocho puntos y se situó en el 81%.

China said the number of people living in cities exceeded the rural population for the first time, a historic shift that experts said would put a strain on society and the environment. The change marks a turning point for China, which for centuries was a mainly agrarian nation but has witnessed a huge population shift to cities over the past three decades as people seek to benefit from rapid economic growth.

Apple Inc. agreed to let outside monitors into factories of partners, such as Foxconn Technology Group, and listed suppliers for the first time to counter criticism about conditions of workers making its gadgets.

Foxconn Technology Group (FOXCGZ), maker of Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone and parts for Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox game console, said 150 workers at a southern China factory protested against a plan to transfer them to another business unit.

Word today out of China that 150 workers at a factory that makes iPhones all threatened to jump from the top of the building if they didn't get a raise. Those workers at the Foxconn plant did get a raise. It's the same company that got a lot of press over the past few years for a rash of suicides there among workers, but these aren't the only workers protesting work conditions and pay in the country.

The detention of two Indians by Chinese businessmen has shed light on the tough, uncompromising and often lawless business environment in which foreign enterprises, lured by lucrative profits, operate in some southern Chinese trading towns.

There is a saying in China about the coal miners who go underground into the bowels of the earth to earn their living -- that they only become human again when they come back to the surface.

Shenzhen's minimum wage will rise from next month, ending a one-month delay to the increase rather than a year-long grace period that angry Hong Kong manufacturers had asked the municipal authorities for in December.