I truly respect your sentiment, I truly do. Trust me. I don't like the idea that tech is made that way. But there is a reality, and the reality is somewhat simple. Apple (or any other big) can't do otherwise. There is no way. China is a growing economy, its leaping forward from being a backward country to one of the most industrialized and modern countries is astounding. It takes time to adjust an economy of such scale. And they are doing much much better. It's not long ago that they had famines that exterminated millions of people, and some of them were caused by the government itself trying to impose ways to handle the market. Mao's Leap Forward caused about 50M (fifty million!) people to starve to death.
Nowdays China is faring much much better. It's actually one of the biggest tech markets now, and one of the biggest markets for iPhones! Finally, they see real cash. Again, for their economy this is a transitional period. Some in this generation will have to carry the burden of it. The problem is that an economy in a transitional period is also very unstable. A sneeze and the whole country goes back.
Now, it is evident that Chinese are doing much better now, specifically because with their transitional economy they are cheap yet enough industrially advanced. People work at Foxconn one or two years (two crappy years...) and then they go back to their city/village with more money they could've dreamed of... it's very telling that they find so many "underpaid" workers. There is one thing that would destroy everything: a decrease in demand. China can't allow a decrease in demand at this point. Once the economy is powerful and steady enough (10 years?), then yes, you can manage demand by maximizing profits (same thing that apple does!). But now that would cause a massive disruption to the economy.
So? There are also less factory workers here, and they usually need certifications etc. You can work on a Chinese airplane with almost nothing, here you need A&P and so on. Different job markets.
