{
    "archive_path": "archive/1787954660.630464",
    "base_url": "thediplomat.com/2026/08/tim-cooks-dark-legacy-in-china",
    "basename": "",
    "bookmarked_date": "2026-08-28 22:04",
    "canonical": {
        "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/thediplomat.com/2026/08/tim-cooks-dark-legacy-in-china",
        "dom_path": "output.html",
        "favicon_path": "favicon.ico",
        "git_path": "git/",
        "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=thediplomat.com",
        "headers_path": "headers.json",
        "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt",
        "index_path": "index.html",
        "media_path": "media/",
        "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html",
        "pdf_path": "output.pdf",
        "readability_path": "readability/content.html",
        "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png",
        "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html",
        "warc_path": "warc/",
        "wget_path": "thediplomat.com/2026/08/tim-cooks-dark-legacy-in-china/index.html"
    },
    "domain": "thediplomat.com",
    "extension": "",
    "hash": "1DCC6AYR2GCDY95QKVJK",
    "history": {
        "archive_org": [],
        "dom": [],
        "favicon": [
            {
                "cmd": [
                    "curl",
                    "--silent",
                    "--location",
                    "--compressed",
                    "--max-time",
                    "120",
                    "--output",
                    "favicon.ico",
                    "--user-agent",
                    "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)",
                    "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=thediplomat.com"
                ],
                "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)",
                "end_ts": "2026-08-28T23:14:26.438859+00:00",
                "index_texts": null,
                "output": "favicon.ico",
                "pwd": "/data/archive/1787954660.630464",
                "schema": "ArchiveResult",
                "start_ts": "2026-08-28T23:14:25.859918+00:00",
                "status": "succeeded"
            }
        ],
        "git": [],
        "headers": [
            {
                "cmd": [
                    "curl",
                    "--silent",
                    "--location",
                    "--compressed",
                    "--head",
                    "--max-time",
                    "120",
                    "--user-agent",
                    "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)",
                    "https://thediplomat.com/2026/08/tim-cooks-dark-legacy-in-china/"
                ],
                "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)",
                "end_ts": "2026-08-28T23:14:26.803546+00:00",
                "index_texts": null,
                "output": "headers.json",
                "pwd": "/data/archive/1787954660.630464",
                "schema": "ArchiveResult",
                "start_ts": "2026-08-28T23:14:26.448679+00:00",
                "status": "succeeded"
            }
        ],
        "htmltotext": [],
        "media": [],
        "mercury": [
            {
                "cmd": [
                    "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js",
                    "https://thediplomat.com/2026/08/tim-cooks-dark-legacy-in-china/",
                    "--format=text"
                ],
                "cmd_version": "1.0.0",
                "end_ts": "2026-08-28T23:14:41.290177+00:00",
                "index_texts": null,
                "output": "ArchiveError: Mercury was not able to get article text from the URL",
                "pwd": "/data/archive/1787954660.630464",
                "schema": "ArchiveResult",
                "start_ts": "2026-08-28T23:14:39.693334+00:00",
                "status": "failed"
            }
        ],
        "pdf": [],
        "readability": [
            {
                "cmd": [
                    "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor",
                    "/tmp/tmp_k3_3_bf",
                    "https://thediplomat.com/2026/08/tim-cooks-dark-legacy-in-china/"
                ],
                "cmd_version": "0.0.11",
                "end_ts": "2026-08-28T23:14:39.679181+00:00",
                "index_texts": [
                    "On September 1, 2026, Tim Cook will hand over control of Apple to John Ternus. He leaves behind one of the most efficient manufacturing systems in consumer electronics, one he helped build as operations chief from 1998.\nIn China, Cook leaves a second, but related, legacy: workers on Apple lines toiling 60 hours a week or more, often without a rest day and depending on overtime to cover the basic cost of living.\nTernus will have to decide how to handle both of these realities.\nAt China Labor Watch, we just completed a new investigation into Apple\u2019s supply chains in China. Our conclusion is not simply that Apple\u2019s compliance system fails to prevent violations. Many of the labor conditions that the report identified are baked into the production model itself.\nI once asked a worker on an Apple line at a Foxconn factory what he made of the human rights standards Western countries talk about. He called them Western propaganda. What taught him about America, he said, was not standards on paper but the machine-like pace of Apple\u2019s line and pay he was never sure would arrive.\nSince 2006 we have investigated Apple\u2019s suppliers in China, publishing 19 reports. I have come to believe blaming Apple alone would be unfair. Apple\u2019s supply chain in China was built on a trade. China needed foreign capital, technology, and jobs. In return, Western firms got cheap labor and speed built on long overtime and extreme scheduling flexibility.\nThe Chinese government, Apple, and the supplier factories all bear responsibility for the conditions workers face. But Apple has treated allegations of wrongdoing as a compliance problem, rather than the output of its own production model.\u00a0\nApple\u2019s product cycles are fast, and launches send order volumes sharply higher. Suppliers work on thin margins and must deliver enormous volumes quickly. The component prices are set; equipment costs are sunk. There is only one place left to ensure profits: labor costs. Workers\u2019 hours and income become the buffer, absorbing the volatility Apple itself generates.\nApple\u2019s answer has been to police this through a Supplier Code of Conduct, audits, public reporting and worker training. While these steps do have an impact, the overall pattern is clear: individual violations may be corrected, but the same problems return.\nIn 2019 we found withheld wages at Foxconn\u2019s Zhengzhou plant. At the same plant, more than half the workforce was on dispatch contracts, far above the legal cap of 10 percent. Apple disputed most of our findings but acknowledged excessive use of dispatch workers. In 2022 thousands at the same plant clashed with police over pay promised at recruitment; Foxconn apologized, blaming a computer input error. In 2025 we found dispatch workers still being used above the legal cap.\u00a0\nThis August we found a full-time assembly worker at Foxconn\u2019s Zhengzhou plant on a base wage of 2,450 yuan a month, about $363, a little above the city\u2019s legal minimum of 2,350 yuan. To reach 4,200 yuan he has to work 60-hour weeks, totaling roughly 87 hours of overtime a month, against a statutory ceiling of 36.\nRaising his base wage by 1,750 yuan, about $260 a month, would let him earn the income he needs on a legal schedule. Even if all 200,000 workers employed at peak operating times received that increase for a full year, the cost would be roughly $620 million \u2013 about half of one percent of Apple\u2019s $112 billion in net income in the year to September.\u00a0\nClearly, Apple can afford to pay more. The discrepancy, then, points to a deeper issue: labor conditions are not given the same priority as output, speed, and profit margin.\nLook at how Apple manages suppliers. Yield rates and delivery deadlines are tracked precisely. Missing them can cost a supplier its orders. A labor violation, by contrast, will just produce another audit. Foxconn went through the 2010 suicides and has gone through one labor dispute after another since. To this day it remains one of Apple\u2019s most important partners.\u00a0\nSuppliers know exactly which metrics are most important to Apple.\u00a0\nApple could have set an enforceable wage floor and made labor conditions matter as much as quality and delivery. It has not.\u00a0\nChina has changed, economically and politically. If Apple wants to keep relying on China as its main production base, maintaining the old model now comes at a higher price in both Beijing and Washington. Apple has been willing to pay that price. It has never paid a comparable price to the people who build its phones.\u00a0\nAs if the suffering of thousands of workers wasn\u2019t enough, there are other costs as well. When the United States preaches labor rights while its most emblematic company leaves Chinese workers dependent on illegal overtime to live, the contradiction erodes the very labor and human rights standards it promotes.\nCook proved Apple can control how an iPhone is made. He never showed that Apple is willing to take responsibility for the welfare of the people who make those phones. For 20 years Apple\u2019s priorities have been consistent: production first, responsibility second.\nOn September 1, Ternus inherits the manufacturing system Cook helped create \u2013 and the unpaid debt to the workers who power that system. Whether the debt is paid will not be recorded in the next Supplier Responsibility Report, but it will show up in how the worker on the line describes America to everyone he knows."
                ],
                "output": "readability",
                "pwd": "/data/archive/1787954660.630464",
                "schema": "ArchiveResult",
                "start_ts": "2026-08-28T23:14:37.894345+00:00",
                "status": "succeeded"
            }
        ],
        "screenshot": [],
        "singlefile": [],
        "title": [
            {
                "cmd": [
                    "curl",
                    "--silent",
                    "--location",
                    "--compressed",
                    "--max-time",
                    "120",
                    "--user-agent",
                    "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)",
                    "https://thediplomat.com/2026/08/tim-cooks-dark-legacy-in-china/"
                ],
                "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)",
                "end_ts": "2026-08-28T23:14:37.886572+00:00",
                "index_texts": null,
                "output": "Tim Cook\u2019s Dark Legacy in China \u2013 The Diplomat",
                "pwd": "/data/archive/1787954660.630464",
                "schema": "ArchiveResult",
                "start_ts": "2026-08-28T23:14:37.847571+00:00",
                "status": "succeeded"
            }
        ],
        "wget": [
            {
                "cmd": [
                    "wget",
                    "--no-verbose",
                    "--adjust-extension",
                    "--convert-links",
                    "--force-directories",
                    "--backup-converted",
                    "--span-hosts",
                    "--no-parent",
                    "-e",
                    "robots=off",
                    "--timeout=120",
                    "--restrict-file-names=windows",
                    "--warc-file=/data/archive/1787954660.630464/warc/1787958866",
                    "--page-requisites",
                    "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) wget/GNU Wget 1.21.3",
                    "--compression=auto",
                    "https://thediplomat.com/2026/08/tim-cooks-dark-legacy-in-china/"
                ],
                "cmd_version": "GNU Wget 1.21.3",
                "end_ts": "2026-08-28T23:14:37.835890+00:00",
                "index_texts": null,
                "output": "thediplomat.com/2026/08/tim-cooks-dark-legacy-in-china/index.html",
                "pwd": "/data/archive/1787954660.630464",
                "schema": "ArchiveResult",
                "start_ts": "2026-08-28T23:14:26.813749+00:00",
                "status": "succeeded"
            }
        ]
    },
    "icons": null,
    "is_archived": true,
    "is_static": false,
    "latest": {
        "archive_org": null,
        "dom": null,
        "favicon": "favicon.ico",
        "git": null,
        "media": null,
        "pdf": null,
        "screenshot": null,
        "singlefile": null,
        "title": "Tim Cook\u2019s Dark Legacy in China \u2013 The Diplomat",
        "warc": null,
        "wget": "thediplomat.com/2026/08/tim-cooks-dark-legacy-in-china/index.html"
    },
    "link_dir": "/data/archive/1787954660.630464",
    "newest_archive_date": "2026-08-28T23:14:39.693334+00:00",
    "num_failures": 1,
    "num_outputs": 5,
    "oldest_archive_date": "2026-08-28T23:14:25.859918+00:00",
    "path": "/2026/08/tim-cooks-dark-legacy-in-china/",
    "schema": "Link",
    "scheme": "https",
    "snapshot_id": "f8dd3888-bce2-448f-94ad-b45fe12dffe4",
    "sources": [
        "/data/sources/1787954660-import.txt"
    ],
    "tags": ",escalation,pool",
    "tags_str": "escalation,pool",
    "timestamp": "1787954660.630464",
    "title": "Tim Cook\u2019s Dark Legacy in China \u2013 The Diplomat",
    "updated": "2026-08-28T23:14:25.859544+00:00",
    "updated_date": "2026-08-28 23:14",
    "url": "https://thediplomat.com/2026/08/tim-cooks-dark-legacy-in-china/"
}