As a foreigner there are certain places in China they won't let you travel through and even certain cities you cannot stay in overnight. This often coincides with where mining and industrial production are.

China has an impressive ability to cover up the truth.

You cannot decouple labor and environmental abuse from low margins industries that are upstream of high value manufacturing, even in China.

Every one of those automotive robots uses chips that contain REEs that is heavily sourced from Myanmar (a country in a state of civil war) and processed in poorer Chinese provinces like Yunnan and Guangxi. The steel used to build the casing for those robots will have been forged using metallurgical grade coal that (best case) was sourced from Australia's Carmichael coal mine who's operator has evaded paying taxes and overriden Australia's labor unions with the full backing of both parties.

Even today, the median household disposable income in China is in the $300-400/mo range [0], and labor abuse remains a problem in much of industrial China [1]

But that's the only way you can build stuff. Commodities are inherently commodified (it's in the name) - you cannot manufacture without commodities upstream. You will always need plastics, steel, coal, rare earth minerals, etc so someone will always be commodified (or synonym - exploited).

[0] - https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202504/t202504...

[1] - https://www.somo.nl/the-hidden-human-costs-linked-to-global-...