Is Chinese culture and government to blame for engineer’s suicide over missing iPhone? [UPDATED]

On Thursday, July 16, Sun Danyong, a 25-year-old engineer in China, committed suicide when an iPhone prototype under his care went missing. Here is the series of events that led to the insurmountable pressure and ultimate suicide for the young man:

On Thursday, July 9th, Sun got 16 prototype phones from the assembly line at a local Foxconn factory. At some point in the next few days, he discovered that one of the phones was missing. He suspected that it had been left at the factory, but couldn’t find it. On Monday, July 13, he reported the missing phone to his boss. Then, that Wednesday, three Foxconn employees searched his apartment — illegally, according to Chinese law. Accusations are flying that Sun was detained and physically abused during the investigation, although this has not been substantiated (possible evidence: there’s this somewhat garbled and potentially faked instant message exchange from Sun shortly before his death).

via iPhone prototype goes missing; Chinese worker investigated, commits suicide | VentureBeat.

While many are beginning to examine Apple’s extreme methods for secrecy and the pressure it puts on its suppliers, manufacturers and developers, I can’t help but think this might not have happened in a country like the U.S. or Canada or England. Steven Lin, a Chinese blogger and marketer, summates the realities of such incidents in Chinese life:

Students [like Sun] have been studying in schools for years, and they have been carefully protected by their parents. They can’t endure such pressure – ‘their house being illegally searched,’ or ‘house arrests’ (if that’s true, according some reports news). Employees at these and other factories sometimes kill themselves simply because of the pressure from their daily jobs — you know what’s going to happen when they face more serious threats. Also, most young Chinese guys don’t have friends who are lawyers, so they don’t know how to protect themselves in the legal system. They won’t even look for help from the legal system. They will just endure the pressure, and finally find an extreme way to end all their troubles.

Apple does take extreme care to keep its prototypes and new products under heavily veiled secrecy. The loss of the prototype would have sent a chain of events that ultimately would have had Danyong’s employers putting incredible pressure on him, especially since rumors of torture and beatings had already taken place. While most of us would say it was only a phone and definitely not worth taking one’s own life for it, Danyong’s life and future seemed to be hinged upon the missing device.

Update 4:21 p.m. EST: Apple confirmed the death of Sun Danyong, according to CNET:

“We are saddened by the tragic loss of this young employee, and we are awaiting results of the investigations into his death,” Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet told CNET on Tuesday. “We require our suppliers to treat all workers with dignity and respect.”