Repressive China concessions gnaw at Apple's business and brand -- China Boss update 11.11.22
Update
What happened.
“What drove the mass breakout at the world's largest assembly line for Apple computers was fear, panic and ignorance,” wrote BBC’s Stephen McDonnell as he tried to describe the dystopian mayhem that occurred last week at Foxconn’s behemoth zero-Covid “closed-loop” bubble in central China. “Hundreds of thousands of staff had been ordered not to leave [the] huge industrial complex,” he said.
But then the rumors started.
One young worker told BBC she had heard that the People's Liberation Army "was going to come in and take control so as to enforce a type of giant 'living with Covid' experiment.” Others were convinced their colleagues had been put back to work on the lines with everyone else after testing positive for the virus. At some point, it all became too much, and folks - many of whom were migrants from places much further afield - began to panic.
McDonnell, BBC:
You don't have to search hard to see images with extended lines of mostly young people dragging luggage along the sides of highways.
Ordinary people driving through have taken pity and picked up workers, ferrying them as far as possible.
In scenes reminiscent of the great depression a century ago, workers have been piling onto the backs of trucks, sometimes lighting small fires to keep warm.
The footage of this has kept coming, first spreading around Henan Province then across China and around the world.
In last week’s newsletter, China Boss posted a video clip from The Telegraph which shows angry workers kicking yellow barriers and "a woman in a white hazmat suit wailing in the Foxconn factory residential compound.” “Everybody take a look, Room 726, all dead, my god!,” she cried. Foxconn denied the claim that eight employees had died from Covid, saying the video had been "maliciously edited."
Why it matters.
The latest bruise on Apple’s brand
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