Foxconn, the Apple manufacturing contractor, is up to the same tricks in Taiwan that it has practiced in mainland China. As a matter of fact, the Foxconn Technology Group [Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.] is a "Taiwanese made-to-order electronics giant," and it was this Taiwan-based corporation which provoked "a riot [that] broke out at its plant in southern China last Friday" [Nov9,2k12]. Now, the news release by Chung Jung-feng and Hanna Liu claims there was no involvement by... by whatever name Foxconn hides itself in Taiwan, nor did the incident take place in a Foxconn manufacturing facility but somewhere else — according to Foxconn — citing "a police report" which reduced the number of workers involved from 1,000 to a mere 200 (the typical numbers game of Foxconn and the Chinese govt/s) and in any case "police authorities quickly talked the situation over with the Foxconn employees" — who were not at their place of work, so no employment reference is necessary or relevant, they were just party-goers and voyeurs at the apartment complex. Notice the contradiction between "quickly" and "eventually" in the article. Reporters Chung Jung-feng and Hanna Liu shoud have been more adept in using terms that don't indicate opposites, I'd say.
Now, altho I have my hermeneutic of suspicion well in hand regarding this case, I suggest that there was a rowdy assemblage of about 200 at the apartment complex, 200 who were "eventually" talked out of their anger toward the two disputatious policeman (probasbly bullies). [There are reports from all over China that people quickly gather into a crowd when an incident takes place between a civilian or a small group of civilians and the police; the police are not trusted in many places in China and riots, marches, and other spontaneous actions occur often and in many places. Many of the incidents are labour related.] My guess is that the incident on which the report fixates did take place, but that it is used as a cover to absolve Foxconn of any involvement in an action which, I suggest, actually did took place inside one its facilities in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, on the mainland. Both Foxconn and the local authorities, as well as the national Communist government of China, woud have every reason to suppress information about a riot in a Foxconn plant involving anywhere near the scale of 1,000 workers. I think the event, maybe the two events, did happen. I simply don't believe the excuses and verbal trickery offered that apparently Foxconn has insinuated into a Taiwanese news report that we are better advised to distrust, while we shoud for now trust the original report: about a 1,000 workers disrupted a Foxconn manufacturing faciity in Shenzhen, Guangdong, Peoples Republic of China.
Remember also how Foxconn gained its notoreity in recent years: the spate of suicides in its massive plants and its cage-like dormitories for young internal immigrants coming from the countryside to industrial areas in China for hard work and a meagre paycheck. This is not Henry Ford industrialization.
— Albert Gedraitis
Focus Taiwan (Nov26,2k12)
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