Original figures I had were from 2009 and they were getting under $2 per hour. It's now up to $3 so the wage advantage is 6 to 1 in China's favour.
And this from a 2010 article from Stanford University's Journal of International Relations:
"Unfortunately, links to Chinese manufacturing raise the specter of dubious environmental practices. While the prospect of used solar panels looms somewhere on the horizon of American consumers, villagers in China are forced to grapple with the toxic effects of solar-grade silicon production today. The Washington Post reported these side effects in a recent article that spotlighted a small village in the central province of Henan overcome by a steady flow of silicon tetrachloride, a byproduct of the polysilicon manufactured by Luoyang Zhonggui, a nearby subsidiary of the solar behemoth Suntech...Why hasn’t any action been taken to prevent this pollution? On top of the Chinese government’s underlying aversion to environmental regulations, the Post reports that “there's such a severe shortage of polysilicon that the government is willing to overlook this issue for now.”
http://www.stanford.edu/group/sjir/pdf/Solar_11.2.pdf
There would be no way a practice like this would be tolerated in the U.S. before someone would be screaming bloody murder.
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