So, I have to consider that both sides of this might be exaggerating.
I certainly know how Apple treated me while building their new circular building in Cupertino (which is good in architecture): horribly. They discriminated against me on the basis of race and sex, preferring to have others with a foreign across-the-bay culture commute for hours that fit Apple's special profile (much to the imported workers' chagrin, since they had to commute so far, but some of them seemed appreciative to have work), and imported a bunch of very unsafe workers from other states that all seemed to want to smoke all over the place and break every safety rule. While I traced some of that to just the high amount of work available in the region and the lack of maturity in the newfangled workforce (mostly older people but newly minted, so to speak), it also came from a culture of administration that allowed it.
In my example of my experience, I realized I'm not a very good worker in a high pressure crappy Apple environment*, and different opportunities exist for different people, but I can certainly believe for the examples of the Chinese experience that the truth lies somewhere in between the various exaggerations thrown out there in the above stories about Chinese workers. Those photos of the pink workers could have been worse than most of what goes on, and those photos of the workers in nice office buildings could be better than most of what goes on, or either or both of them could be misrepresentation or accurate to some degree.
As always, life is what each individual makes of it, what they accept, and what they won't accept in terms of being walked all over (or in the case of Tianamen Square, crushed by tank).
* I took a half year vacation after that mistreatment, and collected my thoughts for a while, and tried to heal the parts of my body that weren't permanently damaged. I was lucky to have savings available to do this; in the past, I didn't always have that opportunity. During the later parts of this vacation, everyone around me remarked about how nice, worldly, mature and well put together I was, and I scored better than my par on personal matters. I'm sorry, but that was entirely just good rest and money, and not being worn out (plus any superior real growth I had due to actual higher resources and proper self-treatment).