Wang, who wished to give only her surname, has been employed at the Samsung camera factory for about six months. In a day she will assemble 200 to 300 camera lenses.

"You just keep doing the same thing over and over," she said. "There is nothing really to like, but nothing to really dislike either."

Schools across China provide many of the workers at her factory, she said. Some are recent graduates while others work as interns.

"Some workers have only just graduated from middle school or high school. They can't do other jobs," she said. "They don't understand the other industries so they work here to make money."

While the workers made their jobs sound no better or worse than at factories in other parts of the world, labor groups say more disturbing trends lie beneath the surface. For instance, the Samsung factories tend to hire mainly females between the ages of 18 and 22, according to an investigator with Hong Kong-based China Labor Research Center. That's because younger, less experienced workers are easier to control and less likely to assert their rights, he said.