"Turn away Foxconn , boycott Apple ."
Public opinion on hiking back home continued to spread, and many people began to take the opportunity to clamor to drive away the "sweatshop" Foxconn. Against the background of the severe epidemic in Zhengzhou, it has stepped up production without regard to the health risks of employees. In the eyes of many netizens who were stinged by the tragic scene of returning home, it is not only Zhengzhou, but it is time to drive Foxconn out of China.
(Foxconn factory)
Even if the Zhengzhou Airport Port District working group entered, Foxconn also clarified that "there is no serious infection in the factory, and the epidemic is generally controllable" and promised to "remain voluntarily stay and leave, and provide good guarantees". In the view of netizens who shouted to drive away Foxconn, so many young workers don't even need wages or work, and they have to escape overnight. Without transportation, they have to return home even after walking hundreds of kilometers. This is the ironclad evidence that Foxconn only pursues production efficiency and ignores the health of employees. With this alone, Foxconn must leave.
While netizens scolded "black capitalist" Guo Taiming does not take employees seriously, as Apple's largest OEM manufacturer, netizens also spread their anger to Apple and asked "Why haven't you turned off the iPhone production line yet.
You should know that it is in a controversial situation for returning home on foot to the Foxconn Zhengzhou factory, which is the world's largest iPhone production base, and determines the production and delivery progress of half of the world's new iPhone phones. It is now a critical period for Apple's new product iPhone 14. The global market is waiting for more iPhone 14 delivery. If the Foxconn Zhengzhou Airport factory is suspended due to the epidemic, it may not be Terry Gou and Foxconn, but Apple CEO Tim Cook .
Of course, netizens who were deeply shocked and angry at the escape-style hike may not have imagined that compared with Foxconn, Apple, Terry Gou and Tim Cook, Foxconn closed its factories and devoted himself to epidemic prevention. The most unacceptable thing is probably not them, but Zhengzhou and even Henan.
(Wuzhi County, Henan Province "Welcome Foxconn employees home")
How important is Foxconn to Zhengzhou? To make an inappropriate analogy, "Zhengzhou cannot lose Foxconn, just like the West cannot lose Jerusalem ." As the capital of Henan Province, Zhengzhou, which is "very short of money" and "faced the most difficult task of ensuring the delivery of buildings in the country", had a fiscal revenue of of in the first half of the year, with a growth rate of 4.70%, making it the only negative growth city in the hinterland of the Central Plains.
, which can't afford to toss, can't stand the shutdown of Foxconn and its associated industrial chains. For the world, the closure of Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory is only half of the Apple phones, and for Zhengzhou, in addition to the most direct jobs of 300,000 people, it will also concern the economic data of the entire Henan.
data shows that the arrival of Foxconn has made Henan, which has a total foreign trade volume of no more than US$20 billion, break through the 30 billion US dollars mark with its own strength. By 2020, Zhengzhou Foxconn has become the largest exporter in the country, with an export volume of US$31.6 billion, accounting for more than 80% of Zhengzhou's total import and export volume and about 60% of Henan's total import and export volume.
is no exaggeration to say, "Foxconn's suspension of production is equivalent to stopping most of Henan's exports."
(Foxconn employees who returned home on foot)
When an angry netizen shouted "drive away Foxconn", after the hustle and bustle caused by hiking, the Henan people who came to their senses were already worried, "Please let Foxconn go and stop pushing it to the forefront" and even said harshly, "Don't let Foxconn run away."
In the view of netizens who are sober up to know that Zhengzhou cannot be separated from Foxconn, they blame the Zhengzhou epidemic on Foxconn, "The blame cannot be thrown away randomly." The reason why the epidemic in Zhengzhou is so serious that all industries have stopped working and production, and Foxconn still has to work hard to continue to produce normally is because it wants to support the entire Zhengzhou.
As the well-known media person Xiang Dongliang said in his comments, "Protecting foreign-funded factories is not only for the face of the international image, but also for the internal affairs of the economy and employment." Foxconn, as the most successful investment promotion project in Henan Province in the past decade", directly created more than 20 jobs, and the employment opportunities indirectly driven by Apple's OEM industry chain exceeds one million.
In his opinion, "the stability of the supply chain and the stability of employees are the most concerned issues in the modern manufacturing industry of ", which is also the reason why we " labor cost is much higher than that of India and Southeast Asia" "is still the most important manufacturing base in the world."
(Foxconn factory located in Gwangju Industrial Park, Beijiang Province, Vietnam)
When the huge uncertainty in the future begins to endanger "stability", coupled with " geopolitical tensions and supply chain disruptions caused by the epidemic have caused growing concerns", a small number of Apple's latest iPhones have been made in India, and some production of Google 's latest Pixel phones has also been completed in Vietnam. Even Foxconn is responding to Apple's 's call to "find alternative manufacturing locations" to speed up its layout in Vietnam, the focus of Zhengzhou and even Henan should not "drive Foxconn away", but "can't let Foxconn run away."
You should know that at the time, he was the governor of Henan , , Guo Gengmao, had put a lot of thought into "fishing Foxconn, this big fish to Zhengzhou". He not only accompanied Guo Taiming, whose ancestral home is Jincheng, Shanxi, throughout the whole process, but also accompanied him to Guanlin, Luoyang to burn incense and pray for blessings, and finally let Foxconn's most core OEM project settle in Zhengzhou.
was exempted from tax for five years before it was put into production, and was halved in the next five years. It even specially set up Zhengzhou Xinzheng Comprehensive Bonded Zone for Foxconn specifically in the jurisdiction of the former Zhengzhou Airport Port Area. Now that Foxconn is starting to feed back to Zhengzhou and Henan, if Foxconn is really driven away, it is probably as Henan netizens are worried, "If there were no Foxconn, the airport port area would immediately become a wilderness."
"The impact of driving Foxconn away may be on Henan and Zhengzhou, which may be dozens of times more severe than the flood and epidemic." This is a bit sensational, but it is so true for the group who relies on Foxconn to make a living.
(Workers who go to the Foxconn factory in Yunzhong Industrial Park, Vietnam have a salary of less than half of those of workers of the same level in China)
Just like the Foxconn employee with the pseudonym Zhou Yuan revealed in an interview with the media, "In the early stage of the epidemic, if a workshop has close contact or mixed collection abnormalities, Foxconn will pull all one or two thousand employees in the entire workshop out of quarantine; later, the policy changes. If mixed collection abnormalities, 20 people in this management need to do another single collection, the positive ones will pull away the isolation, and the negative ones will work and live as usual."
In the case of "point-to-point closed-loop management, employees are required to have two points and one line in the factory dormitory", at least as of now, "Foxconn port area has not stopped construction, and the factory has been operating normally." Even so, Reuters still reported that "affected by the epidemic, iPhone shipments in Foxconn's Zhengzhou Park may decrease by 30% in November."
Just as Hon Hai mentioned in its statement in response to the hiking return incident, "The Zhengzhou Park of the Group is continuing to implement epidemic prevention measures, implementing closed-loop management , point-to-point commuting, daily nucleic acid and antigen screening, providing employees with three meals for free, adding 24-hour care hotlines, volunteer services and other employee care measures, and continue to provide employees with the latest epidemic prevention information and publicity."
Under the epidemic, Foxconn's normal production is not only a need for the stability of the international OEM supply chain, but also an effective exploration of "coordinating epidemic prevention and control and economic and social development". This not only concerns the jobs of 200,000 employees, but also the jobs of Zhengzhou, Henan, and even each of us.
(a small number of Apple's latest iPhones are already made in India)
The existence of Foxconn may allow many Henan people to hike back on foot in their hometowns. Once Foxconn is driven away, many of them may only be able to "eat bran" in their hometowns.Even if
is not so unbearable, in the context of international capital and technology companies gradually transferring supply chains from China, if the OEM companies without the willingness to transfer are still driven away by ourselves, wouldn’t it be the wish of some people who are clamoring to diversify the entire supply chain outside of China?
: Even if we can ignore it, where is the intention to do this?
