Perhaps your better understanding of China can help answer this question. Why do so many workers work in these factories? From my reading (*), it’s because the working conditions in those factories – as bad as they may be compared to working conditions for the average American – are much better than for the average Chinese.

Put another way, is it possible, that these factories in China actually improve the average working conditions for Chinese? If you regulate them out of existence are you really helping the Chinese by returning them to worse working conditions? If sweatshops are required stops on the path between subsistence living and an American style workforce, then shouldn’t we be happy that progress has been made?

It’s a reasonable question to ask whether or not sweatshops can be bypassed. But so far as I’m aware, there’s no example of a modern economy that did it. Not even the U.S.

(*) Consider this: http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2008/Powellsweatshops.html.

Then again, I’ve never been. My extensive research into Chinese action movies would suggest that outdoor markets and tea houses were common back then, but there’s always some damn precocious scamp that will ruin everything by fighting Manchu imperialists in them.

I’m betting they’re working on it under the radar. All you need is a big warehouse –all the maritime stuff can be rented at the last minute. And free electricity is even cheaper than BPA-subsidized electricity. And better for the rivers.

And I bet they don’t leak IP packets all over the ocean when they break down. Just think of all those oil services workers who won’t even need to be retrained! Building and maintaining a floating / semi-submersible data platform couldn’t be that different than doing the same on an oil rig.