China’s stringent COVID-19 mitigation rules have shuttered operations at two factories owned by Foxconn, a major Apple supplier.
Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, has suspended work at two factories in Kunshan, which is located just outside the major tech hub of Shanghai, according to the South China Morning Post.
Operations there have reportedly been on pause since last Wednesday as the country battles its worst wave of the pandemic yet. The plants were shuttered after people tested positive for COVID-19 at both of the factories.
China has a zero-COVID-19 policy, which entails the imposition of strict mitigation measures that include isolating individual cases, a sharp contrast to Western countries that have leaned upon mass vaccination and masking.
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The Washington Examiner contacted both Foxconn and Apple for comment but did not receive responses.
Foxconn acting spokesman Jimmy Huang told Al-Jazeera that operations are continuing at the company’s main campus and that Foxconn is working to shift production in an effort to avoid further complicating the already frayed supply chains.
“As production has previously been deployed to backup factories, the factory’s main products are located in overseas shipping warehouse and inventory levels are still sufficient, the impact on the company’s business is limited,” Foxconn said.
Millions of people are currently under lockdown orders across China as it fights to isolate those who are infected and to stop community spread of the virus. The number of new cases per day has risen from 100 earlier in the year to more than 20,000.
In March, when the current wave of the virus first began, China announced that Shenzhen, known as the Silicon Valley of China, must put its 17.5 million residents under stringent lockdown orders. Despite the lockdowns, Foxconn was able to continue operations by isolating its workers from the rest of society.
Chinese employees who worked at Foxconn in Shenzhen were moved into company-run dormitories and were driven to and from the factory to avoid contact with nonworkers. The workers also had to undergo COVID-19 testing procedures, basically creating a bubble for them from the outside world.
That strategy of closed-loop management has also been deployed for workers in Dongguan, another major manufacturing hub.
China’s zero-COVID-19 strategy has generated fears that it will bring down the country’s economy and add to global supply chain and inflation concerns.
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Retail sales across mainland China fell 2% in March and 3.5% from a year ago, the worst annual plunge since the start of the pandemic about two years ago. The Chinese unemployment rate has also gone up in light of the economic slowdown, rising to 5.8%, the worst since 2020 and above Beijing’s target.
Foreign investors have also begun pulling their money out of Chinese markets. In March, some $7 billion worth of shares were pulled from the Chinese economy by overseas investors.
