The culture in China is such that this is commonplace in many factories. In fact it's such a pervasive, hidden practice, that it's one of the most significant challenges that all US companies have to deal with when setting up plants in China. Therefore, while it's great fodder for the US media, especially a high profile company like Apple, unfortunately it's more of a local problem unique to the region. As much as I am against this practice, for someone to believe that any US company supports it is wrong. The greatest fault of US companies that do discover under age workers, is ignoring it by looking the other way. Who knows if Apple was aware & looked the other way? We certainly will never know. The positive side of this, is if it's true, at least it was revealed... and hopefully it will be eliminated from Apples operation. The greater problem when one looks at the big picture, is that US companies are literally forced to use low wage labor so that they may compete with their counterparts who are able to offer low prices on the finished product, to consumers in the USA because of the wholesale migration, of a great majority of US manufacturing, to China.