Workers flee Apple’s biggest iPhone factory in China in fear of COVID lockdown

Hundreds of workers have fled from Apple’s largest iPhone-making site in China’s manufacturing hub of Zhengzhou, Henan Province, after a COVID outbreak forced staff to lockdown at the workplace.

Employees at the Foxconn factory, which employs about 200,000 people, cited the failure to provide enough food and a safe working environment, leading many of them to flee in fear of getting sick.

• Videos (here, here, here, and here) circulating on social media over the weekend showed some people climbing over fences, lugging suitcases on the highway, and trudging through brush with their belongings.
• Zhengzhou, a city of 12 million people, reported 167 locally transmitted COVID cases in the seven days to October 29, nearly double the 97 infections from the prior seven-day period.

Taiwan-based Foxconn said it would not stop people from departing, and promised on Sunday to coordinate with authorities to help transport people home, according to a statement from the Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone, which oversees the factory.

• Since starting “closed loop management” on October 13 (per Caixin), Foxconn said it was providing its staff with three meals a day, but did not comment on the number of infected workers or the number of people who have left.
• Last week, the company had confirmed reports of a small COVID-19 outbreak, but denied reports that its operations had been disrupted, saying that production remained “relatively stable.”
• Neighboring cities are scrambling to accommodate the influx of migrant workers in order to contain the spread of the virus.

The exodus has driven Foxconn to shift some of its production to other parts of China, in a bid to keep operations running during “peak production season.” The company, also known by the name of its Taiwan-listed entity Hon Hai Precision Electronics, produces roughly half of the global supply of Apple’s iPhones.

• Ming-chi Kuo, an analyst at TF International Securities, estimated that the situation in Zhengzhou affected “more than 10%of global iPhone production capacity” but may have a “limited impact” on shipments of the new model.
• Apple’s iPhone production could slump by as much as 30%, Reuters reported, citing an unidentified source.

Meanwhile, lockdown measures across the nation are stoking concerns of COVID-zero mismanagement and even more supply chain disruptions:

• Shanghai Disney Resort suspended operations yesterday due to lockdown curbs, trapping visitors inside until they produce a negative COVID test.
• Last week, China suspended in-person classes and dining-in at restaurants in a district in Guangzhou, stoking concerns about the potential for disruption in the southern manufacturing hub.
• Dozens of locals in Xining took to social media to complain of food shortages, after the city went under sudden lockdown due to a surge in cases.
• A rare protest against COVID-zero controls cropped up in Tibet, after videos circulating on social media reportedly showed hundreds of demonstrators in Lhasa marching and clashing with police.