Following Tim Cook's meetings with China's Executive Vice-Premier Li Keqiang earlier this week, the Apple CEO took a trip to Zhengzhou to check out the new Foxconn manufacturing facility and its iPhone production line. The plant, located in the Foxconn Zhengzhou Technology Park, is the world's largest smartphone production base, having 95 production lines, and employing about 120,000 people.

While Apple has performed audits of its manufacturing facilities since 2007, and recently opened them up to the Fair Labor Association and ABC News, Cook's visit marks the first time an Apple CEO has visited an actual production plant. While no other details have been released about the visit, the plight of the laborer assembling our beloved consumer electronics has gotten a huge amount of coverage in the media this year, and Apple likely hopes to use the appearance to better control the dialogue about worker rights at its facilities.