"Designed by Apple in California Assembled in China" is etched into the glossy black of every iPhone. The designer is mourned and deified the world over, but the assemblers are huddled in anonymity. Indeed, the story of Apple’s rise over the last decade is as much America’s story as it is China’s. If Steve Jobs was the general who led the battle for global digital technology supremacy, then it took hundreds of thousands of his troops in factory overalls and to realize his vision with precision and consistency. But kneading innovation in the abstract in Cupertino was realized as tangible devices in city-sized factory in Shenzhen, China. Commercialization of the sophisticated products, while successively lowering prices, would’ve been impossible without China’s essential role. The Chinese factory worker’s role in the Apple story should not obscure Steve Jobs monumental achievements as an innovator. Nor should those workers’ roles be marginalized in the breathless paeans to Jobs’s almost-mythical legend. As a matter of fact---many of the stories that germinate in Silicon Valley usually find their denouement in Shenzhen or nearby factory towns.
