The Chinese Communist regime on Wednesday issued a call for retired soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to report for work at the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, the world’s largest facility for assembling Apple iPhones.
The Foxconn factory-made global headlines when terrified workers were filmed climbing over barriers and fleeing for dozens of miles on foot to escape one of China’s notorious coronavirus lockdowns.
Foxconn workers fled at the beginning of November after a purportedly small number of coronavirus infections prompted one of China’s notorious “zero-Covid” lockdowns at the huge and crowded facility.
Many of the workers were migrants from other cities who feared they would become trapped by a district or citywide lockdown, as was indeed imposed on the Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone a few days after the worker exodus began.
Other escapees complained about uncomfortable and unsanitary conditions in the factory, where they were expected to live under “closed-loop management” protocols. Some feared the lockdown would get them infected with Chinese coronavirus because they were forced to eat and sleep with infected people.
Foxconn offered retention bonuses to stem the tide of refugees and last week it launched a major recruiting drive to replenish its manpower. Those strategies evidently have not worked as well as hoped, because officials in nearby Changge county posted an open letter to former PLA personnel on Tuesday, urging them to “answer the government’s call” and report for work at the Foxconn plant in Zhengzhou.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported the open letter from the Changge veteran affairs bureau was abruptly deleted without explanation by Wednesday morning, but other “grassroots” recruiting efforts are still underway across Henan province:
Local authorities have also encouraged cadres in the cities of Kaifeng and Jiyuan in Henan to “form teams” that would work at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou facility for at least a month, according to a report by the Shanghai Securities Journal, a state-owned daily newspaper.
It is important for Henan to help restore normal production “as quickly as possible” at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou complex to help secure its role in Apple’s supply chain and protect the local economy, according to Mei Xinyu, a researcher affiliated with China’s Ministry of Commerce.
The SCMP’s correspondents suspected a bit of panic about reduced iPhone production prior to the big winter holiday shopping season, along with fears by Chinese officials that Apple and/or Taiwan-based Foxconn might lose patience with the endless “zero-Covid lockdowns” and move their operations out of China. Foxconn has reportedly been able to shift some of its iPhone production to a factory in India, while some of its competitors are looking at Vietnam.
The Diplomat wondered last week if an iPhone shortage at Christmas could be the beginning of the end of “China’s dominance of the supply chains in the global production network.”
The answer is “probably not, but maybe,” because so much skilled human capital has been developed around China’s massive factory-cities and competitors like India and Vietnam will not make the massive investments necessary to recreate those favorable industrial environments unless they are quite certain China’s status as “workshop of the world” is in serious jeopardy. It is unlikely – but possible – the coronavirus lockdowns have created enough uncertainty among both foreign companies and Chinese workers to create that jeopardy.
“People are losing their faith about the future in a context in which they don’t know whether they will have freedom tomorrow. The ripple effects can be catastrophic: without a level of certainty about the future, people reduce their consumption, which is the key to China’s economic growth,” The Diplomat mused.
According to data released by the Chinese government this week, Zhengzhou is one of several cities to report record-high coronavirus cases, so there may be no end of pandemic restrictions in sight.