Reuters, file

Zhang Tingzhen (center) is given a doll to play with by his mother Wei Xiuying while sitting beside his father Zhang Guangde at a Shenzhen hospital in southern China Sept. 26.

HONG KONG - Apple's largest contract manufacturer has been pushing for a Chinese worker left brain-damaged in a factory accident to be removed from hospital in a case that throws a harsh new spotlight on labor rights in China.

Zhang Tingzhen, 26, an employee of Taiwan firm Foxconn, had nearly half his brain surgically removed after surviving an electric shock at a plant in southern China a year ago. He remains in hospital under close observation by doctors, unable to speak or walk properly.

However, Foxconn, which is paying Zhang's hospital bills, has been sending telephone text messages to his family since July, demanding they remove him from hospital and threatening to cut off funding for his treatment -- a move the firm says would be justified under Chinese labor law.

Foxconn confirmed it had sent the messages, saying that under Chinese law the worker must submit himself to a disability assessment, a process that in Zhang's case would require him to be discharged from the Shenzhen hospital and travel the 43 miles to Huizhou, where he was first hired by Foxconn.

Risk of brain hemorrhage
The firm said in response to emailed questions that it would be prepared to return Zhang to the Shenzhen hospital after the assessment, though his father said Zhang was unfit to travel and that doctors felt he remained at risk of a brain hemorrhage.

The case has raised fresh questions over the labor record of Foxconn, one of the biggest and most high-profile private employers in China, after a series of well-publicized suicides among its army of around a million workers and recent outbursts of labor unrest.

Report: Riots break out at Foxconn factory in China

It has angered labor activists who say Zhang's plight also highlights China's patchy and sometimes precarious welfare system for workers seriously injured in industrial accidents and point out that there are many workers worse off than Zhang.

"They kept sending me SMSs every day to get my son out of hospital and to appear before an injury assessment body or they will stop paying all expenses, including his medical fees and our living expenses," Zhang's father, Zhang Guangde, said.

"You cannot imagine the suffering they put me through, how I had to fight every inch of the way just to get money so we can take care of our son," he added, speaking at his son's bedside at the Number 2 People's Hospital in Shenzhen.

Zhang was repairing a spotlight on an external wall at a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, bordering Hong Kong, when he received an electric shock and fell 12 feet to the ground. He has since undergone five operations, has lost his memory, is incontinent and requires careful, regular monitoring.

Worker at Apple-supplier Foxconn in China: 'We're humans, we're not machines'

Workers who are disabled in workplace accidents and covered by insurance are eligible for compensation payouts, once their disability is assessed and graded by a panel of medical experts. The assessment is done after medical treatment is finished.

Foxconn sent the text messages -- and according to Zhang's father at one point briefly halted payments to the family -- despite a provincial law stipulating that injured workers can remain in treatment for up to two years before they must be assessed for disability compensation.

The company, however, denied that it delayed or stopped payments, saying it paid them on time.

Zhang, whose case was alerted to Reuters by labor activists, has been in hospital since October 2011.

'At the mercy' of system
Doctors at the Number 2 People's Hospital declined to comment for this article, but Zhang's father, 50, said they had not indicated that he could be discharged and had said they needed to keep his son under observation after implanting a tube in his body to drain fluid from his brain cavity to his bladder.

"The doctor told me they needed to monitor his condition and that for such serious injuries, a person was allowed to be treated in hospital for up to two years. After that, assessors can order treatment to be prolonged," the father said.

Labor activists in China say Zhang is just one of many thousands of Chinese workers who are left permanently disabled or chronically ill by workplace accidents, at the mercy of a system that often requires them and their families to fight degrading battles for treatment funding and compensation.

'This American Life' retracts damning report on Apple manufacturer Foxconn

"China now has laws specifying the types of compensation that are due to workers. But in many serious industrial accidents, companies still put workers or their families through a lot of suffering just to get what is due to them," said Choi Suet-wah of the Chinese Working Women Network in Hong Kong.

"They are robbed of their dignity," said Choi, who has extensive experience working with migrant workers in China.

Zhang is actually one of the lucky ones, social workers say, pointing out that Foxconn has at least been paying his hospital bills and the living expenses of his family, which has moved to Shenzhen from central China to be with him.

Worker suicide at Chinese plant of Apple supplier, Foxconn

They estimate that at least four out of 10 Chinese workers are not covered by any kind of insurance and are left to fend for themselves when seriously injured in the workplace -- despite laws requiring all employers to insure their workers.

"This is just one of many, many industrial accidents in China. And you almost certainly never get what you are entitled to, especially in serious cases," Choi said.

Dad: Son calls me 'mother'
Foxconn says it is insured against workplace accidents, which means its insurer would meet the cost of a compensation payment once Zhang's disability is finally assessed.

But compensation in China can vary depending on the city in which a worker's disability is assessed, and this, according to Zhang's family, is why Foxconn wants him to travel to Huizhou and refuses to have him assessed in Shenzhen.

Labor activists say wages and compensation levels are all substantially lower in Huizhou than in Shenzhen, one of the most expensive cities in China.

When asked why Zhang could not be assessed in Shenzhen, Foxconn said the law required him to go to Huizhou because he had signed his employment contract there. It added that it was prepared to send him back to the hospital in Shenzhen if the assessors determined that he required more medical attention.

In hospital, Zhang walks unsteadily, holding on to the bed frames of other patients in his shared room and, with a smile, sits down next to his father whose face tightens with emotion.

"He calls me 'mother' and calls my wife 'father.’ He can only mimic words you ask him to say, it is meaningless," the elder Zhang said later, holding a jar containing large fragments of his son's cranium. Doctors replaced a portion of Zhang's skull with synthetic bone.

He said that despite Foxconn's funding -- a monthly allowance of 11,000 yuan ($1,800) plus treatment costs -- the family had racked up 200,000 yuan ($31,800) in debt to pay for medicines not provided by the hospital and other expenses.

Back home in central Henan province, the family was building a house for Zhang to live in after his impending marriage when he was injured.

"We were building a three-story house," the elder Zhang said. "The project has since been abandoned and all the building materials we bought have been washed away by rain. But these workers still have to be paid. My whole life is over."

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The trial of nine people charged in a case involving a teenager who sold his kidney to purchase an iPad and iPhone concluded in a Chinese court on Friday, according to state media.

The defendants included the surgeon who allegedly removed the kidney from the 17-year-old, identified only by his surname, Wang, and eight others who are accused of helping to plan and carry out the scheme.

The verdict would be announced at a later date, state-run Xinhua reported.

'Gambling debts'
Prosecutors in the Beihu District of Chenzhou, Hunan province, have accused defendant He Wei of arranging the transplant last year via Internet chat rooms. He was described by Xinhua as "penniless and frustrated over gambling debts."

Chinese man wakes up — minus his kidney

The doctor, Song Zhongyu, from a provincial hospital in Yunan province, allegedly transplanted Wang’s kidney to a recipient in April 2012, Xinhua said. Wang later suffered renal failure, the report said.

The defendant earned a little under $9,000 in the deal, Xinhua said. Another defendant, Su Kaizong, the contractor of the urology department of the hospital, earned around $9,500; Song, the surgeon, earned a little over $8,000; and other defendants involved in the scheme earned lesser amounts, Xinhua said.

Read more about China on Behind the Wall from NBC News

Wang, the young patient, was given around $3,500 upon leaving the hospital, according to the news service.

The incident came to light after Wang returned home and his mother demanded to know where he got the money to pay for an iPhone and iPad, Xinhua said. At that point, Wang confessed, Xinhua said.

Among the others arrested were two nurses, a surgical assistant and an anesthesiologist, Xinhua said.

China puts cops on trial for 'bending the law' to help wife of ousted politician

After the indictment was read in court on Thursday, Wang's attorney requested about $356,000 in compensation, the news agency said.

The British Broadcasting Corp. said the defendants face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty.

A first: More cheers than jeers at new Apple product debut in China

Huge popularity
Apple products are extremely popular in China, but their price tags tend to be too high for most workers to afford.

Products such as the iPhone and the iPad have quickly become must-have accessories for the country's youth and business elite in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

From 2011: Entire fake Apple shop found in China

Last year, the Cupertino, Calif., company's chief financial officer was quoted as saying that of all the Apple outlets in the world, the China stores clock on average the highest traffic and highest revenue.

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TAIPEI - A chlorine gas leak at an Apple Inc. supplier's Chinese plant killed one person and left four others in comas, Xinhua Net reported late on Thursday.

Catcher Technology confirmed that an incident at its factory in Suzhou, eastern China, had caused injuries.

Xinhua reported the gas leak occurred during waste water processing.

Read more China coverage in our Behind The Wall blog

"It has nothing to do with our production or material used," James Wu, Catcher's vice president of corporate finance, told Reuters. "It happened when a contractor was processing waste; it was routine work. We are currently trying to understand what has gone wrong."

Wu did not confirm the number of the casualties or the nature of their injuries.

Worker at Apple supplier: 'We're humans, we're not machines'

The company later issued a statement, saying the accident involved five workers, though it also did not detail the nature of any injuries.

"The accident happened at the waste disposal facility and is not directly related to any manufacturing process, factory, or materials. This is also a single and isolated event," the statement said.

Worker suicide at Chinese plant of Apple supplier

Last October, a separate Catcher plant in Suzhou was ordered closed for a time because of complaints from nearby residents about strong odors from gas emissions.

Catcher Technology supplies metal casings for Apple Inc. and Dell Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported. 

The newspaper added:

China-based suppliers of electronic components for global brands have been under scrutiny in recent years following a spate of industrial accidents, pollution charges and employee suicides.

In one example of how international firms have addressed such issues, Apple is working with major supplier Foxconn Technology Group, which makes iPhones and iPads, to improve conditions at its factories in China after an audit report found excessive working hours and health and safety issues there. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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TAIPEI - A young worker at a Chinese plant supplying tech giant Apple jumped from his apartment Wednesday, it was reported - the first suicide since the plant's owners agreed to improve work conditions. 

Foxconn Technology Group, the main supplier of Apple Inc, said on Thursday that the 23 year-old employee fell to his death from his apartment located outside the plant in the southwestern city of Chengdu.

The worker had joined the company last month and police were investigating the death. 

"Foxconn is sparing no efforts in cooperating with the police and helping with the investigations," the statement said, according to a report on the website of news channel Focus Taiwan.

Apple and Foxconn reached an agreement in March to improve conditions for the 1.2 million workers assembling iPhones and iPads, a landmark decision that could change the way Western companies do business in China. 

iPhone game to benefit Foxconn employee who attempted suicide

According to the agreement, Foxconn would hire tens of thousands of new workers to reduce overtime work, improve safety protocols and upgrade housing and other amenities. 

The move comes after Apple, criticized over working conditions at its sprawling chain of suppliers in China, agreed to an investigation by the independent Fair Labor Association earlier this year to stem criticism that its products were built in sweatshop-like conditions. 
A series of suicides among young workers were reported at Foxconn in 2010, and three workers died in an explosion at a Foxconn plant in Chengdu last June. 

A report in The New York Times also documented the cramped living conditions of Foxconn employees, as well as excessive hours on the job and seven-day workweeks in which employees stand for hours without break

'This American Life' retracts damning report on Apple manufacturer Foxconn

Foxconn also announced in mid-February it had raised wages for workers by 16 to 25 percent. 

Hon Hai Precision Industry, which makes iPhones and iPads for Apple, is the main listed unit of the Foxconn group, while Foxconn International manufactures handsets for clients such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson.

About 100 workers from Foxconn's Chengdu plant went on the rampage earlier this month after a dispute in a restaurant turned violent. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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ZHENGZHOU, China -- In the eight years since Zhang Shuxiang first left her village in the poor interior of central China, she worked in 20 factories before coming to the assembly line of a Foxconn plant making products for tech firms including Apple. She wants it to be her last.

The 26-year-old has worked in factories making products as varied as coffee makers, jewelry and Apple's LED screens. Each time, she quit, blaming low wages and unreasonable supervisors, then joined another factory.

Reuters

In eight years, Zhang Shuxiang -- seen posing for a photograph at her home in Zhengzhou, China, on Wednesday -- has worked in 20 factories. She wants the Foxconn plant to be her last.

"Factory work is too tiring," she said when asked about life after Foxconn, which she plans to leave by June. "Since last year, I've kept on telling myself I would never want to enter a factory ever again, but I'm still doing it in spite of myself."

She embodies the shifting expectations and opportunities of tens of millions of young Chinese workers from the countryside who have turned their country into a workshop of the world.

Their changing attitudes pose a deep challenge for thousands of manufacturers, such as Foxconn and its big customer Apple, which have relied on what they once thought was a virtually endless stream of inexpensive, compliant workers.

Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou has pledged to keep on increasing worker salaries and cutting the hours of work, after it came under fire for poor working conditions for employees making Apple iPhones and iPads.

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Zhang now works on an assembly line for computer motherboards, in a factory inside a mammoth industrial complex on the outskirts of Zhengzhou, which Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook visited in late March during a trip to China.

Before finally deciding whether to quit, Zhang said she will wait to see what changes come from the agreement signed by Foxconn and Apple to improve working conditions.

Workers more aware of rights
Meeting the aspirations of Zhang and other migrant workers who power China's economy -- officially estimated at 159 million -- is crucial for the government. Younger, better educated and more tech-savvy, many migrant workers grew up as the sole children in their families and are less accepting than their parents were of tough working conditions.

They are also becoming more aware of their rights and of the widening growing range of available jobs, including services, that has come with rapid economic growth and which offer a way out of the relentless tedium of factory work.

"They are willing to take collective action, strikes, work stoppages, protests when they feel their rights have been violated or what they are owed has not been given to them," said Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesman for Hong Kong-based workers' rights group China Labor Bulletin.

"Workers know that if they stand their ground and ask for better pay and conditions, employers ... have to agree to some of their demands," he added.

Apple, supplier pledge to improve conditions

Duncan Innes-Ker, senior China analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, said there is a "perfect storm of factors" coming together to support workers as they push for higher wages: sustained economic growth, government policy support for a higher minimum wage and demographics.

Joe Tan / Reuters, file

Employees eat their meal on a guardrail of a bridge near the Foxconn recruitment center in Shenzhen, Guangdong province in this Feb. 22 file photo.

The number of young Chinese workers aged 15-24 years of age will likely fall by a third in the next 12 years, giving more bargaining power to this younger blue-collar generation, Beijing-based consultancy Dragonomics has projected.

Advocates decry Foxconn treatment of student interns

The average monthly wage of China's migrant workers in 2011 rose 21.2 percent from 2010 to 2,049 yuan ($320), with wages higher in the more developed coastal areas like Guangdong. Even so, despite the recent increases, such wages are still many times lower than in Western developed economies.

On a recent afternoon outside a labor market in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of Henan, a scattering of people were scrutinizing recruitment placards on a fence. Companies were looking for store managers, retail assistants and accountants. Some were offering salaries that range from 1,200 to 6,000 yuan.

'All menial work'
Xie Wen, 22, an unemployed former nurse, looked horrified when asked whether she was considering a job at a factory.

"It sounds good, but it's all menial work. If you want to earn a lot, you have to work a lot of overtime," she said, adding that she does not want her next job "to be too tough. I don't want any night shifts and I don't do overtime."

Her friend, Jin Jin, 27, who has been looking for work since she quit her job at a pharmacy a month ago, said she resigned because it was "meaningless" work. Since 2004, she has held four to five jobs and is now seeking one in sales that pays about 2,000 yuan, with about 4-6 days off a month, subsidized meals and overtime fees.

Chinese oil company surpasses Exxon as world's largest

Clad in a black blazer, jeans and pink sequined shoes, Dou Jing, 20, said she worked in the quality control department in an electronics factory for a year after high school.

"It was very tiring. I had to work night shifts that lasted 12 hours," Dou said. She later found a job as a receptionist for a small company, greeting guests and pouring tea for them.

"I didn't feel I could learn anything," she said, adding she wanted to learn some skills in her next job and open a shop.

Probe links corporate spying to Chinese government

Walking through the crowd, a man surnamed Yang was trying to recruit telemarketers. He was distributing flyers that offered wages of 3,000 to 5,000 yuan a month, but not many people expressed interest.

"Workers are more choosy, they want a high salary, a job that's close to home and work that has very little responsibility," he said. "I think that's unrealistic."

Although the younger, more finicky cohort of migrant workers could pose a challenge for China's exporters, Innes-Ker said "we're still a long way away from the idea that foreign companies are moving out of China because it's too expensive."

"It's very difficult to find somewhere with the similar strengths of China," he said. "When it comes down to it, China has massive clusters that allow a very high degree of specialization to occur, and that helps to push down costs quite dramatically."

'Eat bitterness'
Zhang's elder brother, Zhang Junfeng, 30, who also works at Foxconn, said turnover is particularly rampant among younger factory workers, particularly those born in the 1990s.

"They'll resign the minute they get angry," Junfeng said. "Very few of them can eat bitterness."

Reuters

Zhang Junfeng (left), picks vegetables with his relatives at their home in Zhengzhou, Henan province Wednesday.

Eating bitterness is an expression used by Chinese who have endured decades of natural and man-made hardships throughout China's tumultuous history -- a term that also applies to Zhang's parents, who are both 61 and were farmers their whole lives.

On a recent afternoon, the pair sat in the courtyard of their home in Yezhang village, an hour's drive from Zhengzhou along several unpaved roads that cut through fields of wheat. They were picking through freshly harvested spinach from their fields to sell in Zhengzhou.

Zhang laughed when asked how her life is different from her parents, whose faces are brown and wrinkled from the sun. "At that time how can there be factories? That time, there were communes," she said.

China tells activist Ai Weiwei to turn off webcams

The round-faced Zhang, clad in a red tunic and black sweatpants, knows a thing or two about eating bitterness.

She was 18 when her mother paid a middleman 600 yuan to find her a factory job in Dongguan, a gritty city in Guangdong. When she arrived after a two-day rickety bus ride in 2004, she called home and cried to her mother after only a few days.

Unreasonable quotas?
In a Foxconn factory in Longhua in a suburb of Shenzhen, Zhang said she was hospitalized for two weeks in late 2011, blaming her supervisor for setting unreasonable quotas. She finally protested with her feet, quitting after about three months.

In one day, Zhang is required to paste 5,000 round dots by hand on a component for motherboards.

Yet even with the tedious work, Zhang says conditions at the Zhengzhou factory are better than at the previous Foxconn factories where she's worked. Her workday is about eight hours and she is given eight days off a month.

Foxconn pays her a base salary of 1,550 yuan a month, an increase from 1,320 yuan the year before, and extra for overtime duty. She lives four to a room in her dormitory, which she pays 150 yuan a month to rent and is Spartan with just two metal bunk beds and a desk.

Back at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen where Zhang worked in 2010, workers on the assembly line were banned from talking to one another and taking toilet breaks that exceed 10 minutes, according to Zhang.

"At that time, that made me think of the phrase: 'We're humans, we're not machines'," she said.

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An episode of the popular weekly radio program "This American Life" that painted a damaging picture of life for employees at factories that make Apple products in China contained "significant fabrications," the show said Friday.

"We're horrified to have let something like this onto public radio," Ira Glass, the public radio show's executive producer and host, said in a blog post. "Our program adheres to the same journalistic standards as the other national shows, and in this case, we did not live up to those standards."

The program retracted the Jan. 6 piece that is believed to have started the recent spate of articles examining Apple manufacturer Foxconn.

The 39-minute piece received 888,000 downloads and became its most popular podcast, according to the show. The story detailed what it said were extremely poor working conditions of Chinese workers making products such as iPhones and iPads at factories owned by a company called Foxconn, which also manufactures products for other electronics giants.

Apple protesters hit stores, hack Foxconn

The piece vaulted Mike Daisey into the role of Apple's chief critic, the post on NPR.org said, and also inspired a Change.org petition that collected more than 250,000 signatures demanding that Apple better the working conditions at the factories. According to the statement, the program did not commission the piece, but grabbed it from Daisey's one-man performance, "The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs."

In a press release, the show said it first learned Daisey had fabricated parts of his story when the public radio program "Marketplace" tracked down Daisey's interpreter, who disputed parts of Daisey's monologue.

"Daisey lied to me and to 'This American Life' producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast," Glass said. "That doesn't excuse the fact that we never should've put this on the air. In the end, this was our mistake." 'This American Life' will devote its entire program this weekend to detailing the errors in the story," the press release said.

During fact checking before the broadcast of Daisey's story, staffers asked Daisey for this interpreter's contact information. According to the press release, Daisey told them her cell phone didn't work and provided an incorrect name. He said he had no way to reach her.

"At that point, we should've killed the story," Glass said. "But other things Daisey told us about Apple's operations in China checked out, and we saw no reason to doubt him. We didn't think that he was lying to us and to audiences about the details of his story. That was a mistake."

The New York Times also documented the cramped living conditions of Foxconn employees, as well as excessive hours on the job and seven-day workweeks in which employees stand for hours without break. The article included reports of underage employees and workers exposed to deadly chemicals used to build and clean Apple products, documented deadly accidents at the plant and included damning quotes about Apple's ambivalence about working conditions. Other published accounts reported worker suicides at the plant, as well as the very low pay -- $1.78 an hour, according to another report by Business Insider.

According to the press release, Daisey's interpreter,  Li Guifen (who goes by the name Cathy Lee professionally when working with westerners) disputed two of the most dramatic moments in Daisey's story: his meeting with underage workers at Foxconn and his reporting on a man with a mangled hand that he allegedly injured at Foxconn making iPads.

In the show airing this weekend, Daisey apologizes for the misrepresentations, according to the press release.

"It was completely wrong for me to have it on your show," he is quoted as telling Glass, "and that's something I deeply regret." He also expressed his regret to "the people who are listening, the audience of 'This American Life,' who know that it is a journalism enterprise, if they feel betrayed."

This article includes reporting by msnbc.com's Becky Bratu.

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Customers test out Apple iPads in the company's flagship store in Beijing's Sanlitun area on Wednesday. A Chinese tech firm, Proview claims it still owns the iPad trademark In China and will seek a ban on exports of Apple Inc's computer tablets from China, which could deal a blow to the U.S. technology giant's sales worldwide.

BEIJING – “This is the user manual and spec sheets for the IPAD,” said Ma Dongxiao, a patent lawyer in Beijing. In his hands he held a simple black and white pamphlet that laid out the technical aspects of his client’s product.

Absent from the front page was the familiar Apple logo we have come to expect. Rather, he held just a simple description in English for a boxy wireless device shaped like an old TV that was ponderously dubbed a “Professional Color LCD Monitor.”

Simple as the device might appear, it is the linchpin in a new phase of Shenzhen-based tech company Proview’s latest attack on Apple: A restraining order filed this month in a Shanghai court demanding Apple cease using the iPad name in China.

Just days after the euphoria of a $500 stock valuation, Apple has been dealt a series of significant legal blows in China that casts doubt on the legality of the tech giant’s control of the iPad trademark here on the mainland.

And the worst might be yet to come.

The legal issue at hand for Apple is simple enough: Does the Cupertino-based company own the “iPad” trademark in China? Or does it belong to Proview (Shenzhen), a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Proview International Holdings Ltd. – at one time one of the largest manufacturers of computer displays in the world.

NBC/ITN

The cover of Shenzhen-based tech company Proview's owner's manual for their IPAD device, called a "Professional Color LCD Monitor."

Murky trademark deal
Proview began trademarking the term, “IPAD,” in China and other countries back in 2000. The company coined the name for a handheld device it claims was the actual start of what later would be dubbed “tablet computing.”

The project never came to fruition, though, and the name sat unused until 2009 – a year before the debut of the iPad we know today. That’s when Apple allegedly swooped in and paid a Proview subsidiary in Taiwan $55,000 for the trademark rights in ten countries, including they claim, China.

Not so, says Proview in Shenzhen, which argued that it – not the subsidiary in Taiwan – had registered the iPad name in China and thus controlled its trademark on the mainland.

In 2010, Proview took Apple to court in Shenzhen and won a decision last December that ruled Apple had incorrectly purchased the China trademark from the Taiwan-based subsidiary, resulting in a legally non-binding agreement. 

An appeal filed last month by Apple in a Guangdong provincial court was similarly rejected, paving the way for Proview to file a slew of trademark violation complaints across China with local Industrial and Commercial Administrative Bureaus. In 20 cities across four provinces, these departments began enforcing the decision, confiscating iPads from sellers and exposing Apple to fines up to five times the profit from iPad sales.

Online retailers are also taking note of the complaints, with Amazon China and Suning.com, a Chinese e-commerce site, also pulling iPads off their websites.

Undeterred, Apple has appealed the ruling to a higher Guangdong court. Carolyn Wu, a spokesman for Apple in China, told the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, “We bought Proview’s world-wide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago… Proview refuses to honor their agreement with Apple in China.”

More suits to come
Talking about the upcoming Shanghai suit for which Ma says arguments will begin next week, Chinese legal experts are already arguing that Apple faces long odds of winning. As one lawyer put it, Apple’s negotiating with Proview’s Taiwanese subsidiary is “like negotiating with a son and expecting the father to go along with what was agreed upon.”

NBC/ITN

The user manual for Proview's  IPAD shows off its boxy wireless device shaped like an old TV. Proview claims it has the rights to the trademark "IPAD" in China , locking it in a legal battle with U.S.-based tech giant Apple.

With Proview’s ownership of the iPad trademark already established in the Shenzhen courts, it seems doubtful that the Shanghai court will side in favor of Apple and effectively overturn the appeals court in Guangdong.

Late last year, China became Apple’s second largest market after the United States. A decision against Apple that results in the ceasing of mainland iPad sales would be catastrophic for the company, which reportedly sold 15.43 million iPads in the last quarter of 2011 alone.

Even more troubling is another complaint Proview plans to file by the end of this month to China’s customs authorities that would ban the export and import of the new iPad 3. Almost all of the 30 million iPads sold last year are assembled outside the U.S., mostly in China. A successful injunction against Apple on exports of its iPad 3 would effectively make its rumored early March rollout date a pipe dream, putting a significant dent in the company’s profits.

Payday ahead for Proview?
All of these lawsuits, injunctions and complaints beg the question, what is Proview’s end game?

After all, Proview can seemingly look ahead confidently to the upcoming customs complaint and Shanghai lawsuit knowing that the Chinese courts have ruled in their favor in regards to ownership of the iPad trademark. Barring some new, compelling evidence from Apple, it will be extremely difficult for Apple to overturn two decisions in favor of Proview.

Bobby Yip / Reuters

A man walks on a bridge in front of the derelict office of Proview Technology in China's southern city of Shenzhen on Wednesday.

So what does Proview want?

The lawyer, Ma, played coy in answering that question and simply said he hoped that the two parties would be able to settle their disputes out of court. Indeed, a settlement between Apple and Proview is increasingly looking like an expensive proposition for the American tech company and a financial windfall for the cash-strapped Proview.

However, rumors of Proview seeking a $1.6 billion dollar payout may seem almost reasonable to Apple if Proview’s multiple suits successfully pass through Chinese courts and an embargo on shipments of iPad 3s is enacted. Although, it’s important to remember that Apple reportedly has $97.6 billion in cash reserves, so a $1.6 billion payout wouldn’t exactly break their bank.

Despite the long legal odds against Apple, and Proview seemingly sitting in the driver’s seat, the chances of such a doomsday scenario occurring seem distant as both sides appear even more poised for a settlement.

After all, while China’s expansive, albeit limitedly enforced, intellectual property laws currently favor Proview, it seems doubtful that a Chinese ruling blocking the shipment of iPad to countries where Apple legally owns the trademark would hold up in a complaint among the bodies that regulate international trade.

Furthermore, during these trying economic times globally, it would simply be foolhardy for China’s Customs Bureau – and by extension, the ruling Communist Party – to invite the swift international condemnation that would inevitably follow any blocking of Apple exports.

Ultimately, as Stan Abrams of the China Hearsay blog put it, Proview’s best strategy would seemingly be to wreak enough legal havoc for Apple so that the disruption of exports, while not an inevitability, would be a big enough threat to bring them to the settlement table.

Whatever decisions are made in the next few weeks, Apple will surely pay dearly for its first significant blunder since its entry into the China market.

Bobby Yip / Reuters file

Workers are seen inside a Foxconn factory in the township of Longhua in the southern Guangdong province, in 2010.

BEIJING—Last week, the New York Times published a report about working conditions at factories producing Apple products in China.  Under the spotlight was Foxconn Technology, a key manufacturer for Apple and “China’s largest exporter and one of the nation’s biggest employers, with 1.2 million workers,” responsible for churning out tens of millions of iPhones and iPads sold around the world.

The article focused specifically on Foxconn’s Chengdu factory, where employees have complained about nonstop shifts, arduous overtime, crowded dormitories, mental health (nearly twenty workers at Foxconn have committed suicide over two years), and a hazardous working environment that's led to at least one explosion, in May 2011.

The New York Times report was also published in Chinese in the well-respected business and economic news weekly Caixin, where Chinese readers could post comments in response to the story. 

Since it was released over the Lunar New Year festival, a week-long holiday which brings the country to a rare standstill, reaction seemed relatively muted.  As we write this, there were 650 comments on Caixin’s Weibo page (a Twitter-like Chinese microblog)--compared to the 1,770 comments on the Times’ website. 

A cynical reaction in China
On Caixin’s Weibo site, some of the comments condemned Apple’s corporate practices, but many also criticized the Chinese government for failing to protect its own citizens.

“Labor protection and social security is not only the responsibility of corporations.  If the government had regulations and supervised the corporations, then they cannot be that irresponsible,” wrote one person. 

A significant number also captured a sentiment that was cynical but perhaps very pragmatic of many Chinese: 

“If they don’t work for Apple, those workers don’t have anywhere to shed their sweat and blood.”

“Why not kick Apple out?  Tens of thousands of people will lose their jobs.“

“They are criticizing Apple only, because Apple is a huge target.  The migrant workers hired by state-owned enterprises here can hardly be as good as Apple’s.  Take care of your own workers before you pay attention to other people’s suppliers.”

All of which was bolstered by something this week that explains--in part--why the response in China might not be as outraged as those in the West might expect.

Workers want those jobs
On Monday, tens of thousands of people lined up outside a job agency to apply for an estimated 100,000 new jobs Foxconn is seeking to fill at its factory in Zhengzhou, the capital of central Henan province. 

Foxconn wants to double its current workforce of 130,000 at the Zhengzhou plant, which it opened last year.  The facility already churns out 200,000 iPhones a day and is part of Foxconn’s grand plan to make Zhengzhou the world’s largest smartphone manufacturing base.

The basic starting salary advertised--according to a report posted on M.I.C. Gadget, a blogsite about tech and other related matters in China—is 1,650 yuan a month ($261), which includes dorm housing and food.

The pay is lower than comparable salaries Foxconn pays workers at its Shenzhen factory in southern China.  But that may be a sacrifice Henan workers are willing to make initially. 

With a population in excess of 100 million, Henan is China’s most populous province.  A fifth of them are migrant workers who travel widely to find jobs in the country’s more prosperous regions like the south or coast.

With additional reporting from Bo Gu.

BEIJING– Question for Siri: What to do when you have egg on your face?

It’s a question Apple officials in China must be asking themselves today after fighting outside a Beijing store forced the company to close its stores nationwide, leaving hordes of outraged Chinese out in the proverbial cold.

Outside one store in Beijing’s Sanlitun entertainment district, Chinese buyers had been lining up outside of Apple stores around China since yesterday in anticipation of the official launch of Apple’s new iPhone 4S. By 1 a.m. Friday, the line had devolved into a thrall of people gathered around the front of the store.

Many of those in line were scalpers intending to resell the phones at inflated prices to impatient consumers.

Between 4 and 5 a.m., scuffles broke out in the line, first between groups of rival scalpers and then later between scalpers and police. Perhaps fearful of a repeat of the violence that occurred at the same Beijing store just eight months prior at the release of the iPad 2, the store remained closed past the pre-announced 7 a.m. time.

Finally an Apple representative with a megaphone came out at 7:15 a.m. and announced the store would not open for iPhone 4S sales without any additional explanation.

The announcement drew immediate boos and chants of “Open the door!” and “Liars!” from the crowd who had been waiting in subzero temperatures throughout the night. At least one customer left and returned with a bag of eggs which were promptly thrown at the glass walls of the Apple store.

David Gray / Reuters

A man yells at a security guard after the guard tried to remove a member of the crowd at the Apple store in the Beijing district of Sanlitun January 13, 2012.

Apple security who attempted to apprehend the egg throwers were instead chased away by throngs of irate customers. Unverified home video of the incident shot and posted on Chinese video sites show some of the security guards being manhandled and beaten by the crowd.

Police later cleared the mob out from the square and a security cordon manned by dozens of uniformed and plain-clothed police was formed around the Apple store. A police officer outside the store told NBC News that iPhone sales in Beijing were being suspended, but believed the Sanlitun store would be open again tomorrow.

Apple later released a statement stating that “to ensure the safety of our customers and employees, iPhone 4S will not be available in our retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai for the time being.”

“Americans do make good products. Much better than ours.”

Meanwhile in Shanghai, lines were more peaceful, but iPhone sales were just as brisk outside the Apple stores as inside.

An NBC news crew outside the Apple store on the popular Nanjing road shopping street found hundreds milling around outside waiting for their chance at an iPhone 4S.

Chu Shanshan, a 25-year-old nurse who jubilantly walked out of the store with phone in hand said she had been waiting since midnight and had finally bought her dream product after 9 hours of waiting.

"Yes it's expensive. I spent a whole month's salary to buy an iPhone 4S. It's just so cool!" she said proudly.

Suddenly chaos broke out around the entrance of the Apple store. Two policemen, obviously well-prepared, could be seen yanking a man – possibly a scalper – away and disappearing into a nearby alleyway.

"Where are you from?" asked a middle-aged woman from the edge of the crowd.

"Ha! Americans must feel great to see Chinese people fighting to buy their products, right?" crowed the woman before adding, “Well I can't blame them. Americans do make good products. Much better than ours."

Big business for scalpers

For the scalpers who lined up outside of Apple stores today in Beijing and Shanghai, the iPhone’s highly anticipated release is potentially huge business. Apple restricts buyers to two phones each, so to get around those rules, scalpers hire people – often migrant workers looking to make a little extra money – to wait in line with them to purchase more phones.

Some scalpers hired scores of people to line up with them, easily identifiable by the matching ribbons they wore around their arms. They were preceded by the scalpers themselves, who wore identifiers like a balloon to help his or her buyers keep track of their whereabouts.

On Sina Weibo, China’s twitter-like service, a user representing one of the ubiquitous Apple fan clubs talked to one group of 42 buyers who had been hired by a scalper for $27 each to wait in line to purchase iPhones.

For those buyers, it’s extra money to sock away in an increasing inflated economy, but for the scalpers themselves, it’s a small price to pay for the potentially huge profits they can make selling the new phones at exorbitantly marked up prices.

Just 100 yards away from the Apple store in Shanghai, two men in worn, silvery suits held a sign over their head offering the new iPhone 4S 16gb for $918, a significant markup from the $790 listed price on Apple’s China website.

When asked why people would buy from them when they can walk half a block down and purchase the exact same phone for $128 less, one of them said, “Well first of all they don't have to line up and wait if they buy from us."

"And they can only buy a phone at the Apple store,” chimed in the other scalper, “with us we can install a lot of Apps for them."

 NBC News researcher Ting Zhao contributed to this report