Unfortunately, it's not just cheep labor. China has tens of thousands of engineers that Apple needs and uses to ensure manufacturing capability and capacity. The USA and other countries don't have this capability.
(Walk the MIT campus some day and note the percentage of American students. It's mostly oriental and Indian students. Our college prep is third rate compared to china and India, and it's getting worse)
This same crap was said in the 90s. As a Mechanical Engineer and Computer Science recipient I noticed a lot of Asians in the first two years and a considerable drop in the senior year curriculum.
What I did see and watched transpire and subsequently see a few expulsions were Chinese students plagiarizing and cheating on exams.
My Thermal Systems TA caught on when we just had an exam and these students complained they got the same answer but their score was lower than the actual guy who solved the problems for them.
He pulled a 15 stage Thermal System from the book, put it on the board and asked the kid to show him how to solve the same criteria that was on the exam.
The kid kept yapping on about how he got the same score until the TA bluntly said, ``You all cheated. Solve this problem right now and I'll raise your score.''
Each one walked out.
We all laughed.
Come Senior year I had a Chinese kid on my team who couldn't speak a lick of English and his knowledge of Axial Flow Fans [applied Fluid Dynamics] was crap.
He did absolutely nothing on the projects and he was one of the one's who made it to the senior level undergrad status.
The top kids in Machine Design were myself and 6 other Americans. We all decided to form a team ensuring we wouldn't get any free loaders.
My favorite professor, a Pakistani also related stories of his friends back in Pakistan now going to MIT while he himself then the top Nuclear Engineer for Pakistan decided to get his own PhD in Nonlinear Dynamics [at Washington State University] told of the rampant cheating across the board, from all nations. Those same friends with MIT diplomas eventually never entered the Industry.
As our Professor:
He gave us 6 hours to finish our final. Open Book, Open Note. You either got it or you didn't. His class was awesome.
He's still a dear friend and he's the head Nuclear Engineer down in the Tri-Cities. People didn't waste their time cheating in his classes [Machine Design, Kinematics, Nonlinear Dynamics], because he taught it to you 3 ways and gave you lecture notes.
Long Story Short: The Chinese aren't kicking our butts. You just won't see cheap labor in Engineering in the US because we know our self-worth and most of the folk working in those Manufacturing Plants aren't ABET certified holders of a B.S. in Engineering. They are certified and trained to assemble and test advanced electronic system.
If politics were removed from the equation the Chinese would be coming to the bargaining table ready to strike a deal about fair trade hoping we don't entice our corporations to leave in droves.
None of this has a darn thing to do with the Legal case, including your own rant about the Orientals.
Apple has the finest Law Team in the Globe and this company will lose.