China's low wages

Call me single-minded, but when I surf the internet 'China' is my most important key word. When I look into the New York Times or the Financial Times, I first look what they have on China. I start looking into the rest of the world when I'm a bit bored or when a major war is expected. So, when the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) issued a report about the labor condition in the computer industry, I skipped Mexico, Thailand and dived into their evidence on China.
Now, that could potentially be a big story. Getting the large Dell, HP-like corporations nailed down on their inhuman way of producing computers and their components in China. Well, I will not use the word "unfortunately" but there is no story, I found out. I guessed the researches should have asked the Holy Spirit for a bit more inspiration.
Their main discovery: China offers cheap labor, and often does not stick to its own legislatiominimumnumum wages.
Blimey!
For this shocking conclusion they used figures dating from last century, 1998 to be precise. Although the conclusion might still be valid more than half a decade after the figures were collected, I was not really impressed. They were also unable to connect concrete companies with concrete problems in concrete factories: it was only general assessments.
I find this kind of reports more shocking than the low wages in China itself. Of course, wages are low, but migrants do work in those places because at home they would earn less. Does that justifies the lack of compliance with ChinaÂ’s own laminimuminumum wages, no of course, but it is a damned good explanation.

Click here for the full report in PDF-format.