Half of the world’s iPhone are made in Zhengzhou, a city of 10 million people, in Foxconn/Hon Hai factories. Foxconn alone employs 300,000 people there. As usual, when COVID showed up there, strict zero COVID policy is turning people’s life upside down.
On October 22nd, when everyone was focusing on Hu Jintao’s exit at the 20 Big, someone from Zhengzhou tried to get attention on Twitter about lack of food in Foxconn campus. He presented Wechat group screenshots of Foxconn workers complaining that they have received no PCR tests and no food for days.
As usual, no one knew that Zhengzhou was in lockdown until someone revealed it on Social Media, on October 25th. By then, people on Weibo asked:
Is there any sister in Zhengzhou? I heard that you have very severe COVID situations. Especially in Foxconn.
Why isn’t there any news?
How is everything now? Do you need any resources? Even though Henan (the province of Zhengzhou) is a big food production province, how could there be absolutely no news?
There were many posts like this on Weibo. Some people responded:
Zhengzhou has been still for half a month, now finally there is some news.
Foxconn has run out of food, and has too many positive cases.
“Still” is the word Chinese government uses for lockdown.
By October 29, many Foxconn workers had decided to leave and go home. Videos and photos of Foxconn workers walking along highways or in the fields were trending on Twitter. All international newspapers started reporting about it a few hours later. And it was obvious that foreign news media is absent in China: the way news media get their news reporting done is just the same way I write this newsletter: reporting what is going on on Chinese social media.
WSJ actually tried to talk to Foxconn management and workers:
In Foxconn’s main Zhengzhou facility, … hundreds of thousands of workers have been placed under a closed-loop system for almost two weeks. They are largely shut off from the outside world, allowed only to move between their dorms or homes and the production lines.
Many said they have been confined to their quarters for days and that distribution of food and other essentials has been chaotic. Many others say they are too scared to carry on working because of the risk of getting infected.
Some Chinese news website claimed that the CCP party leader at Foxconn acquiesced to allow workers who wanted to leave to actually leave. Mostly because, with little outside support on basic operations such as food supplies and medical care, the company simply can not continue. Work had to pause.
By afternoon of October 30th, according to that same Chinese news website, Foxconn was helping with transportation arrangement. Meanwhile, this happened:
Looks like some of the escaped Foxconn employees have been detained while trying to get home and straight away caught a blast of some sort of anti-#COVID spray.
On social media, people were also reporting that when they tried to leave food for the Foxconn workers passing by to help them with their journey home, the food was actively destroyed by people in red jackets.
One Wechat public account had an article trying to recap what has happened in Foxconn, in short:
The COVID spreading in Zhengzhou started right after the end of the October First national holidays. By October 8th, the city started city-wide mandatory PCR testing, every two days. By October 15th, local lockdowns started. Many districts even started two PCR tests a day. Soon, people started noticing that their neighbours disappeared in the morning. People were transferred out of their homes without a sound in the middle of the night.
Starting from October 21st, Foxconn started a series of new rules restricting the movements of workers on campus. Eating in the dining hall is forbidden. Getting out of the campus is forbidden. Foxconn tried their best to maintain production and eliminate COVID spread. At some point they sent 20-30,000 people with positive test or in close contact with positive people to newly built dorm buildings for quarantine.
What triggered the mass exodus of workers was not the spread of COVID, but the lack of information. People have no idea how many got positive cases, how many are just close contact, how many cases are severe. Rumours were spreading like fire. People who are sick with fever got no medical treatment, while many people had no food, etc. Everyone was in fear that he/she might be the “next”.
By the afternoon of October 30th, Foxconn started collecting information from people who wish to leave and coordinating transport for them to go home.
At the end of the article, the author argued that Foxconn would be in much better shape had they decided to pause production on October 18th. But the factory was rushing to fulfill orders of iPhone 14, and no one dared to make the decision, not even the party secretary of Zhengzhou city. The situation dragged on and became out of control. Meanwhile, on social media, people speculated that the exodus were approved by higher up in the CCP command chain. And those were let go were temporary workers. Real employees are still working. Some estimated the loss of production is about 30% for this month.
Someone posted on Twitter a video he claimed to be from Xinjiang. He said:
The CCP is enforcing in COVID-zero policy on all livestock. The video is sent by Kazakh herders in Manas County, Xinjiang. Large groups of camels, horses, cattle and sheep are forced to be quarantined in a narrow grassland, with no grass to eat. The herders are not allowed to move their livestock to other grasslands. They are also not allowed to feed on the fodder delivered. Even the livestock are being starved to death by the CCP.
This video on Twitter comes with the following explanation:
In Shanghai, 4:00 a.m., the white guards are transiting residents in a building where all were tested negative. But they singled out girls living alone to begin with. They took other people’s shoes and knocked on the door. Isn’t this scarier than the ghosts of Halloween?
This video has the following description:
Hello, this is from Shandong Linyi. The man had no food to eat. He went out to buy food and was caught. The COVID-zero people want to fine him for 5000 yuan.
The man: I’d rather die.
COVID-zero people: Whether you die or not has nothing to do with us.
The man: no way.
COVID-zero people: How about 1000 yuan?
The man: I have nothing to eat, and yet you want to fine me 1000 yuan.
In this video, the woman in black clothes was crying because she just heard that her own sister committed suicide by jumping from a building. She wanted to get out to see her sister. The red jackets forbid her to leave, unless she promises that she will never come back in.
In this video, a man was taken to be quarantined in a hotel. You can see the hotel worker arguing with him, because he could not afford the fees. He said he absolutely had no money, he can work for the hotel to pay the fees. The worker said no, the boss would not approve it. Later, the man found out the electricity in his room was cut, and he was not given any food any more. The hotel worker told him that his health code will stay red as long as he does not pay the fee.
Many dispute on fees are circulating on Twitter. Someone is enjoying the COVID-zero policies.
In this video, a man tried to break the lockdown to buy baby formula. He had a knife in his hand, shouting that he had a really small baby and no one can stop him from buying food for this baby. The next tweet showed that he was arrested before he got a chance to buy his baby food.
Chinese COVID policy is a running jokes for Halloween costume dress up. You can see them here, from Japan, and here, from China. This one from China is very popular. The police is real.
Chinese Embassy in UK released a “press conference” video without actual press or Q & A on October 27th. And comments for that YouTube video was disabled. In the video (English), the spoke person compared the UK government and HK protesters to the farmer and snake in Aesop’s fable.
Would the UK government push back to China? It is a serious question. Lately, someone posted a twitter thread on how highest officials in the UK government are too cozy with shady CCP operatives, here is some quotes from the thread:
Much scrutiny lately of ‘Chinese police stations’ operating on the streets of Britain…
What links the ‘stations’ to British politics, the Chinese Communist Party, an assault in the heart of London, & serious organized crime?
This is big.
1⁄54Disclaimer: 4 British newspapers are aiming to publish slithers of this story. I’ve worked with two of them.
I explain why I’m publishing this on Twitter at the bottom of this thread. This may put my safety in jeopardy.
2⁄54First, the stations. Thanks to @Peterinexile & @SafeguardDefend , the world knows about a network of ‘overseas police stations’ run by China
Investigations have been launched in a number of countries.
The UK has 3, and we know their addresses.
“China’s ‘secret police stations’ in UK must be investigated, say MPs”
3⁄54One of those addresses is also home to a company run by Lin Ruiyou 林瑞友.
There’s also a video on TikTok of Lin promoting the station’s ‘service’
4⁄54In case it wasn’t obvious from the pictures (more than one occasion) of him with Boris, Lin has had access to the likes of @theresa_may, @sajidjavid, and a good number of other Conservatives.
Who is this guy?
5⁄54
Intrigued? You can continue to read the whole thread .
If you wonder about the works of Peter Dahlin/@Peterinexile and Safeguard Defenders cited above, here is one of their reports: “230,000 Chinese “persuaded to return” from abroad, China to establish Extraterritoriality”.
Just like millions of people were put under lockdown while the world knew very little about, 230,000 were “persuaded” to return by Chinese police in other countries and we just heard about it now. In this information war, you have to agree that China is excellent. During the great famine, millions of people died and very few people knew about it. They were always good at this.
New York Times’ podcast The Daily invited a veteran reporter on China Chris Buckley to discuss the 20 Big. It is worth your listening time. Mr. Buckley has lived in China for over a decade until China expelled reporters from the US media outlets in 2020.
One interesting appointment after the 20 big is the party secretary of Shanghai:
Big provincial moves in new CCP Politburo
Chen Jining 陈吉宁 (58) is made Party Secretary of Shanghai to replace Premier-designate Li Qiang
Now he’s a frontrunner for the 7-man Standing Committee (PSC) in 2027
Every Shanghai PS since 1987 won PSC promotion (except Chen Liangyu)
This Mr. Chen is a very well respected Environmental Engineer:
Chen Jining and Li Ganjie’s promotion seems like a victory for environment protection, because Chen chaired that ministry in 2015-17 & Li chaired in 2017-2020. Chen studied environmental science in Tsinghua & Imperial College London & is a renowned environmental scientist.
This seems to be a good news for China and maybe the world.