September 1 will mark Tim Cook’s final day as Apple CEO. What kind of legacy will he leave to his successor? China Labor Watch (CLW) Executive Director Li Qiang recently published an article in The Diplomat, “Tim Cook’s Dark Legacy in China,” examining another side of Cook’s legacy through the experiences of workers in Apple’s Chinese supply chain.
Drawing on nearly two decades of CLW investigations into Apple suppliers, including its latest investigation in 2026, the article argues that recurring problems such as excessive overtime, low base wages, and the overuse of dispatch workers are not simply failures of Apple’s compliance system. They are closely connected to a production model built around low labor costs, rapid delivery, and extreme production flexibility.
CLW’s investigation this August found that a full-time assembly worker at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant earns a base wage of just 2,450 yuan ($363) per month. To earn around 4,200 yuan, he must work approximately 60 hours a week, totaling about 87 hours of overtime per month—more than twice China’s legal limit of 36 hours.
The article argues that Apple has both the financial resources and managerial capacity to improve these conditions. Yet for years, production efficiency, delivery speed, and profit margins have consistently taken priority over workers’ welfare.
The article also raises a deeper issue: For many Chinese workers, Western values such as labor rights and human rights are experienced not through government statements or corporate commitments, but through their daily lives in factories—how much they are paid, how long they work, the production pressure they face, and how they are treated. As one of America’s most prominent companies, Apple’s practices in China affect millions of workers and their families while also undermining the labor and human rights standards that the United States and other Western countries seek to promote.
Over decades, Apple has built an enormous supply chain in China. The Chinese government, local authorities, suppliers, and other stakeholders have gained significant economic benefits from this system. Yet the ordinary workers whose labor sustains it have not received a fair share of the benefits their work has helped create.
As Apple enters a new era of leadership, the question is whether it will continue the production model built under Cook or finally give workers’ rights and welfare the same priority it gives product quality, delivery, and profitability.
Full article available here.
Image by Pixabay.
