Total Pageviews

Chinese Social Media Accounts Clash With Official Reports on Riot at Foxconn Factory

September 24, 2012, 5:35 pm
By JENNIFER PRESTON
Video said to show workers protesting at FoxConn Technology in China late Sunday was uploaded onto YouKu, Chinese video-sharing site, and later posted on YouTube by Richard Lai of Engadget.

As my colleagues David Barboza and Keith Bradsher report, China's official state-run agency said five thousand police officers were called to Foxconn Technology, one of China's largest manufacturing plants, to help quell a riot by employees that led to a shutdown of the plant on Monday.

In an official statement, Foxconn, a major supplier to Apple and other technology companies that is located in Taiyuan in Sanxi province, said that 40 people were hospitalized an d many were arrested during the riot that lasted several hours after it broke out late Sunday night. The company said the dispute appears “not to have been work-related,” which conflicts with unconfirmed reports on Chinese social media sites that claim the melee began after security guards beat a worker.

Richard Lai, a senior associate editor at Engadget, a technology blog, was monitoring posts on Chinese social media sites, including the Baidu Tieba forum, YouKu, a video-sharing site, and Sina Weibo, China's answer to Twitter. Mr. Lai reported that several people said the disturbance started after a worker was beaten. Mr. Lai also published photos of what appeared to be damage resulting from the riot that was shared on social sites; many of which were soon removed from the Web.

Bill Bishop, publisher of The Sinocism China Newsletter, a daily email about news from China, shared on his Twitter account a photo that he found on Weibo said to show damage from the riot.

John Ong of The NextWeb posted an official statement from FoxConn about the incident at the facility, which employs 79,000 people:

Foxconn can confirm that a personal dispute between several employees escalated into an incident involving some 2,000 workers at approximately 11 p.m. last night in a privately-managed dormitory near our manufacturing facility in Taiyuan in Shanxi province. The dispute was brought under control by local police at approximately 3 a.m. this morning. According to police, some 40 individuals were taken to the hospital for medical attention and a number of individuals were arrested. The cause of this dispute is under investigation by local authorities and we are working closely with them in this process, but it appears not to have been work-related. The Taiyuan facility employs 79,000 people and manufactures automobile electronic components, consumer electronic components and precision moldings.

On Monday, the company dismissed some reports in China that ten people had died during the riots.

With the recent announcement of the iPhone 5, there was some speculation online that the riot might have been caused by tensions among workers due to increased production but those reports are unconfirmed.

“>According to Tea Leaf, an online e-magazine that monitors and translates social media posts in China, one text comment posted on a Weibo account called the Sina Technology Channel (@新浪ç§'技) read:

A large number of workers were moved to Taiyuan to make iPhone 5 in a rush. The security personnel at the factory had a fight with a worker from Shandong Province, dragged him to a van and beat him up. The victim's co-workers from Shandong sought revenge, and workers from Henan Province became involved too, and the situation devolved into chaos where workers chased down security guards and beat them up.

Foxconn, which has its headquarters in Taiwan, manufactures more than 40 percent of the world's electronics for such companies as Apple, Dell, Amazon and others and is China's largest and most prominent private employer, with 1.2 million workers.

In the past year, Foxconn has come under intense scrutiny over working conditions inside its factories. Earlier this month in The Times, David Barboza and Charles Duhigg reported that Foxconn was coming under renewed criticism over its labor practices following reports “that vocational students were being compelled to work at plants making iPhones and their components.”