The NY Times just published an article on Apple and why it builds almost all of its stuff in China. Years ago, the Chinese government subsidized building cities of factories that can hire 3,000 workers to live in a dorm in a day —or 8,700 Industrial Engineers in two weeks (it would take 9 months in the U.S.).  Todays gadgets require thousands of little parts that are all made in the same areas.  This whole global supply chain cannot be moved to the U.S. An interesting read about the last minute decision to make the iPhones display glass and more can be found after the break:

In 2007, a little over a month before the iPhone was scheduled to appear in stores, Mr. Jobs beckoned a handful of lieutenants into an office. For weeks, he had been carrying a prototype of the device in his pocket.

Mr. Jobs angrily held up his iPhone, angling it so everyone could see the dozens of tiny scratches marring its plastic screen, according to someone who attended the meeting. He then pulled his keys from his jeans.

People will carry this phone in their pocket, he said. People also carry their keys in their pocket. “I will not sell a product that gets scratched,” he said tensely. The only solution was using unscratchable glass instead. “I want a glass screen, and I want it perfect in six weeks.”

After one executive left that meeting, he booked a flight to Shenzhen, China. If Mr. Jobs wanted perfect, there was nowhere else to go.

New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

For over two years, the company had been working on a project — code-named Purple 2 — that presented the same questions at every turn: how do you completely reimagine the cellphone? And how do you design it at the highest quality — with an unscratchable screen, for instance — while also ensuring that millions can be manufactured quickly and inexpensively enough to earn a significant profit?

9to5mac also made a small list of other reasons why Apple builds the Apple products in China:

1. Foxconn employs nearly 300 guards to direct foot traffic so workers are not crushed in doorway bottlenecks. The facilitys central kitchen cooks an average of three tons of pork and 13 tons of rice a day. While factories are spotless, the air inside nearby teahouses is hazy with the smoke and stench of cigarettes.
2. Various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhones expense.
3. “Our customers are in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China,” said James B. Flaws, Corning’s vice chairman and chief financial officer. “We could make the glass here, and then ship it by boat, but that takes 35 days. Or, we could ship it by air, but that is 10 times as expensive. So we build our glass factories next door to assembly factories, and those are overseas.”
4. At the Silicon Valley Summit: “I am not worried about the countrys long-term future,” Mr. Jobs told Mr. Obama, according to one observer. “This country is insanely great. What I am worried about is that we don’t talk enough about solutions.”

Source [9to5mac]