> the suicide rate at Foxconn during that period was lower than the overall Chinese or US suicide rate.
Please allow me to change your opinion on this. The comparison being made there is the ( number of suicides at Foxconn / number of Foxconn employees ) vs number of suicides in China / population of China. At first glance, this looks like a valid comparison. But it is not. It is actually comparing apples to oranges. The real comparison is against number of employees who choose to commit suicide at their employers premise / number of employees. A useful way to paraphrase this is:
Lets say Google has 100,000 employees. How many Google employees commit suicide at the Googleplex per year? Not how many google employees commit suicide overall.
When phrased this way, it becomes clear that other companies have much lower suicide rates than Foxconn.
That's what is critical to compare. It turns out Foxconn's suicide rate is massively higher than equivalent Chinese employers and the inference is the alleged egregious mistreatment of Foxconn laborers by Foxconn is the cause.
Please allow me to change your opinion on this. The comparison being made there is the ( number of suicides at Foxconn / number of Foxconn employees ) vs number of suicides in China / population of China. At first glance, this looks like a valid comparison. But it is not. It is actually comparing apples to oranges. The real comparison is against number of employees who choose to commit suicide at their employers premise / number of employees. A useful way to paraphrase this is:
Lets say Google has 100,000 employees. How many Google employees commit suicide at the Googleplex per year? Not how many google employees commit suicide overall.
When phrased this way, it becomes clear that other companies have much lower suicide rates than Foxconn.
That's what is critical to compare. It turns out Foxconn's suicide rate is massively higher than equivalent Chinese employers and the inference is the alleged egregious mistreatment of Foxconn laborers by Foxconn is the cause.