Apple's factories in China are 'the happiest place on earth' according to Apple exec

Jeff Williams, a senior executive at Apple, has never been a Chinese factory worker but he thinks it sounds like a pretty sweet gig.

There have been a number of riots, suicides and protests in factories run by Apple sub-contractors (namely Foxconn) in China over the past several years, and when asked to address this at yesterday's Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, the Apple operations chief said:

"We learned [that the suicides] had nothing to do with working conditions. [The factory had a] lower suicide rate at their biggest cluster than any place in the US. By that standard, it's the happiest place on earth."

Let's unpack that.

It's true that some reports found that there was no substantial link between the workers' employment and their suicides. And it's true that a company whose factories employ hundreds of thousands of people in single facilities would, statistically speaking, have a good chance that some of those people would commit suicide.

That said, this is far from a settled issue. When a number of Chinese universities reviewed Foxconn's activities building up to the 2010 series of suicides that resulted in the deaths of 14 people jumping from atop company buildings, they called the factory a "labor camp."

Later, in 2012, 150 employees threatened suicide, with one worker telling the press that they "were put to work without any training, and paid piecemeal [...] the factory was also choked with dust and no one could bear it."

In other words, it's a bit of a contentious issue, to say the least. While the reality may not be quite as bad as some had imagined a few years ago, it likely isn't the glossy, Disney-like wonderland that Williams apparently pictures.

As for the claim that a Foxconn factory had a lower suicide rate than "any place in the US" - it's an argument that simply doesn't make any sense. Foxconn doesn't run factories, it runs cities. Some of its facilities host upwards of 200,000 people who work on the assembly line, live in company dorms, go to company entertainment events and are essentially the living, breathing property of their employer.

If Williams can find some place like that in the US, then maybe he's right.