The pundits are out and speculating that, in the wake of a dozen worker suicides, higher wages and reams of bad press, Foxconn might relocate from China.

AppleInsider thinks Foxconn might move production back to Taiwan. John Dvorak suggests a fed-up Terry Gou might either replace workers with robots or leave altogether. Others pose similar notions.

Two fundamental problems exist with this line of reasoning (three, if you factor in that a scaled-up lights-out electronics manufacturing operation has never existed).

1. No other country, save for India, offers the population China does. Foxconn’s model is built on having access to hundreds of thousands of workers in company towns. Where else in the world is that possible? What other government would even allow it? Taiwan, for example, has neither the space, the population nor the wage rates necessary to pull this off, even if it wanted to.
2. Foxconn has established complete supply chains in or near its campuses. It’s one thing to move a factory. EMS companies do this all the time, and (with some notable exceptions) have actually become fairly good at it. But relocating an entire supply chain takes time and commitments. Foxconn may be the largest EMS player in China, but it’s not the only one, and in just a handful of cities those chains can feed the 75% or so of all electronics manufacturing in the world. Simply put, there are good reasons everyone is in China right now and not, for example, India.

For better or worse, Foxconn and China are bound together.