Initial assessment by the chief of the independent labour group reviewing Apple contractors' factories in China portrayed a serene and sane working environment for thousands of Chinese workers tasked to assemble Apple gadgets.

"The facilities are first-class; the physical conditions are way, way above average of the norm," Fair Labour Association President Auret van Heerden told Reuters of the notorious Foxconn compound in Shenzhen, China.

Compared to other production facilities that the FLA has seen in the past, van Heerden said that Foxconn scored way above the mark of their expectations, belying the horror stories carried by the international media about the labour abuses that were taking place in the plant.

He added that his initial impressions do not represent any component of the FLA study of Apple's gadget manufacturers in China, which according to the tech titan commenced its probe Monday.

Some 90 percent of Apple assemblers will be covered by the FLA study and van Heerden admitted that their work has just started.

Yet his initial thoughts following his first stop on Foxconn prompted van Heerden to give positive marks for now to Apple's Chinese partners.

"I was very surprised when I walked onto the floor at Foxconn, how tranquil it is compared with a garment factory," he told Reuters.

He described the same site where suicides and accidental deaths previously occurred, which labour activists and media reports blamed on troubling working conditions.

With what he had seen so far, van Heerden offered that unfortunate incidents earlier reported may have been caused by 'shocks' that greeted many of Foxconn workers, who he noted were mostly young rural migrants.

"The problems are not the intensity and burnout and pressure-cooker environment you have in a garment factory ... It's more a function of monotony, of boredom, of alienation perhaps," van Heerden said.

He added that many Foxconn workers, and other workers trooping to China's industrial regions by hordes, came from the provincial regions of the sprawling nation.

"You have lot of young people, coming from rural areas, away from families for the first time ... They're taken from a rural into an industrial lifestyle, often quite an intense one, and that's quite a shock to these young workers," van Heerden pointed out.

If their employers were to blame, the FLA chief noted that it would be their failure to anticipate the emotional and mental distress that young Chinese workers would encounter while performing their jobs.

"We find that they often need some kind of emotional support and they can't get it ... Factories initially didn't realise those workers needed emotional support," van Heerden said.

Van Heerden also dispelled speculation that FLA is set to put Apple in a positive light following its study since the company is a member of the labour organisation.

"The FLA system is very tough. It involves unannounced visits, complete access, public reporting ... and if Apple wanted to take the easy way out there were a whole host of options available to them," van Heerden asserted.

"The fact that they joined the FLA shows they were really serious about raising their game," he added.