Angry protests erupt at Foxconn factory in China amid COVID curbs | DW Business

Protests over COVID-19 restrictions by workers at Foxconn’s iPhone factory in central China were met with violence by security personnel, videos circulating on Chinese social media have shown. Workers at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory held protests on the factory campus, where they have had to stay since a closed-loop system was announced to counter the spread of COVID-19 without compromising productivity. Videos of the violence in Zhengzhou showed masked people facing off police in protective suits. Some of the protesters are seen in the videos smashing surveillance cameras and windows on the campus. “The authorities have failed to prevent the news from spreading beyond Zhengzhou,” said Patrick Poon, a visiting researcher at the Institute of Comparative Law At Meiji University in Japan. “It’s rare to see such strong actions by workers in recent years. I’m pretty sure the authorities would use more force to try to contain the situation. It’s concerning to imagine how much worse the will crackdown become as authorities try to censor relevant news about the protest in Zhengzhou.”