The images from the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou resemble revolutionary or civil war scenes: faces covered in blood, torn-down barriers, clouds of tear gas and water cannons sweeping people off the streets. Both at night and during the day yesterday, turbulent scenes erupted around the Apple supplier’s largest plant, which, with its 200,000 or so employees, feels like a city within a city. Inadequate supplies and poor pay have enraged the workforce. Since October, the gigantic plant has been operating in a “closed circuit” due to Covid outbreaks, which means no one can get out.
Despite censorship, the images of the riots now make the rounds in China as well. And they fuel discussions about what price the country should still pay for the strict Covid measures. More and more people realize how confusing the situation is in parts of the country and how quickly the mood can tip, our team reports from Beijing.
The price Germany is willing to pay for its dependence on China is currently being debated in the drafting of Germany’s China strategy. Friction is inevitable. As a Green politician, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock wants to focus on human rights, while the Chancellor’s Office under Olaf Scholz defends the interests of business – at least that is the common narrative. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk has taken a closer look at the two positions based on the sources currently available. His conclusion: The draft from the Foreign Office actually reflects the main ideas of the Chancellor’s Office. But there are also decisive differences. And: In the end, the chancellor has the last word.
Disturbing protest images from Zhengzhou flooded the social media on Wednesday morning. Once again, the focus is on the mega-plant of Apple supplier Foxconn. What can be seen are chaotic scenes in which hundreds of workers initially fight security forces in the darkness of the night on the factory grounds. There is shouting. Tear gas is sprayed. “Defend our rights!” the workers shout.
Later, at dawn, hundreds of employees march down a street outside the plant. Police officers in white Covid security suits seem to retreat at first. But then the two groups clash. Equipped with batons and protective plastic shields, the security forces crackdown on the protesters.
The massive protests present a problem for both Apple and the Chinese government. The situation becomes increasingly dicey for the US company. A few weeks ago, Apple already announced shipping problems for the new iPhone 14 due to the unstable situation at the factory. The warning came after thousands of employees fled the plant to escape the strict Covid measures. Parts of the workforce complained about a poor supply situation, others feared an infection with the virus (China.Table reported).
Foxconn promised to improve the situation and gave workers who wanted to return to the plant higher wages and bonus payments. In the meantime, Foxconn assured that the situation was under control. But that is no longer the case. The protests on Wednesday apparently started because new employees were not satisfied with their pay. There were also rumors that workers were accommodated together with infected co-workers. The plant continues to operate in a “closed circuit,” which means that employees are not allowed to leave the premises.
On Wednesday, Foxconn stated that there was no truth to the rumors. “Regarding violent behaviors, the company will continue to communicate with employees and the government to prevent similar incidents from happening again.”
China’s leadership is now confronted with the second major workers’ protest within a week, with images spreading rapidly on the web. Last Tuesday, for example, angry migrant workers tore down numerous barricades in the southern Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou. The censorship algorithms of Weibo and other social networks responded quickly, as usual. Still, the images made the rounds and triggered incomprehension among many Chinese. More and more people are realizing how increasingly unclear the situation is in parts of the country.
A quick way out of the Covid chaos is not in sight. On Wednesday, the Beijing health authority reported around 29,000 new infections nationwide. By international standards, this number may seem low. But for China, it is close to the highest infection figures of the year, which also means that restrictions are being stepped up day by day.
“China currently sees a record level of lockdowns,” Ting Lu, chief economist at Japanese investment firm Nomura, told the Financial Times. Because so many cities have imposed partial lockdowns, the situation is even slightly worse than in the spring, when the economic hub of Shanghai was locked down for two months. According to Nomura, areas responsible for around 20 percent of China’s economic output are currently affected by restrictions.
Each major city imposed different measures: Beijing urged people in the most populous district of Chaoyang to stay in their homes. Schools, kindergartens and stores are closed. In Guangzhou, several districts are completely under lockdown. Meanwhile, Shanghai announced that travelers coming to the city will not be allowed into restaurants or stores for five days. The mega-metropolis of Chongqing will only allow people to leave in urgent cases and with a negative Covid test.
It seems almost forgotten that the authorities announced a slight relaxation of the measures only two weeks ago. All indications are that infections and restrictions will continue to increase for the time being. Joern Petring
In political Berlin, the impending conflict is already treated as a fact, and the clash of titans is considered inevitable: Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s draft China strategy against the objections of the Chancellor’s Office under Olaf Scholz. While Baerbock as a Green politician puts a focus on human rights and political independence, Scholz as a social democratic chancellor will defend the interests of the economy. This is the common narrative. This was already indicated by the Cosco deal against the will of the Green coalition partners (China.Table reported).
Indeed, political strife within the German government coalition is foreseeable – if only because the three parties want to set themselves apart from each other in the public eye, not least the four liberal FPD ministries. But how far apart are their positions anyway?
In the end, Olaf Scholz has the final say. The chancellor sets the policy guidelines in Germany, and a foreign policy strategy falls within his purview. The best source for the mindset circulating in the chancellor’s office on China is currently Scholz’s guest article in the German daily FAZ before his trip to Beijing (China.Table reported).
Both Baerbock’s draft and the chancellor’s guest article have a lot in common in their assessment of the current situation and their conclusions. The guest article is much shorter, but virtually all of the points raised in it are echoed in the paper by the Foreign Office. In some cases, officials from the two houses even chose the same words.
Both papers agree: China has changed and pursues its interests. At the same time, and here too the text runs parallel, Germany does not want to see an irreconcilable division of the world. “Our goal is not a new bloc confrontation,” Baerbock’s draft reads. “Germany in particular, which experienced the division in the Cold War in a particularly painful way, has no interest in a new bloc formation in the world,” Scholz said.
The overarching concept of both papers is also the same: The same conditions should apply to both sides. “Reduce asymmetries, apply reciprocity,” Baerbock’s people call it. “We are far, too far away from reciprocity, from mutuality in relations between China and Germany,” Scholz laments. The areas to which this is linked are also similar, with market access for companies at the top of the list.
There is great agreement that Germany’s China policy only works as a part of the EU; here, too, there are very similar sentences in both documents. At the same time, both texts emphasize the need to turn to new partners and build international networks. Scholz: “What is true in Europe with regard to Ukraine is also true in Asia, Africa or Latin America. It is here that new centres of power in a multipolar world are emerging, and we aim to establish and expand partnerships with them.” According to the German Foreign Office (AA), “Systemic competition is taking place in Europe’s neighborhood as well as in Africa, Latin America and, of course, the Indo-Pacific.”
Down to the wording, the concern about rapid armament and about Taiwan’s security is also mutual. However, both papers fail to provide a concrete answer as to what should happen in the event of an attack on the island state.
All the more interesting are the few notable differences. Scholz explicitly writes: “We do not want decoupling.” Such a commitment is absent from the Foreign Office draft. The chancellor’s decoupling statement was often quoted in China and interpreted as evidence that Scholz supported Chinese trade interests. Baerbock apparently does not want to leave any room for misunderstanding here.
However, both texts agree that a sudden or even complete breakaway is out of the question. The Chancellor’s Office puts it this way: “Even in changed circumstances, China remains an important business and trading partner for Germany and Europe.” The Foreign Office: “Economic relations are an important dimension of our bilateral exchange with China. For many German and European companies, a presence in the Chinese market is of great importance for their global competitiveness and innovative capacity.”
The Foreign Office and the Chancellor’s Office again absolutely agree, right down to the wording, that risky dependencies must be reduced, especially in the case of raw materials, intermediate products and electronics supplies. Both houses urge to reduce China risks – with Baerbock clearly pointing out that it is in the economy’s own interest to do so.
Back then, in the early 2000s, the greatest adventures could be experienced on China’s railways. Hans-Joerg Schmerer still has fond memories of those times. He was on a backpacking trip with a friend – six weeks, from Beijing to Inner Mongolia. And with every kilometer the two of them traveled, Schmerer ventured deeper into a world that had been unknown to him until then.
It was often difficult to get a train ticket at all. Everything was hopelessly overbooked. Often, the only way was to turn to the black market. And even when the train cars were full: Schmerer enjoyed interacting with the people. He communicated with hand and foot and with the Chinese language skills he had previously acquired through self-study. He mused about China’s economy, traditions and the Chinese way of life – an exciting, carefree time that left a lasting impression on him.
When he returned from his backpacking trip, he decided to study the country even further. He studied economics and sinology. A short time later, he went to Nanjing for a year abroad. An experience that has influenced his path to this day. Not least because this is where he met his wife.
Today, Hans-Joerg Schmerer is 42 years old and Professor of International Economics at the Department of Economics at the Fernuniversität in Hagen. His main focus is on the Chinese economy and its interdependencies with other countries. Schmerer is particularly interested in the big levers of the global economy: How can markets cooperate efficiently in a globalized world? What will the labor markets of the future have to achieve?
A key research topic for the economics professor is currently the question of how zero-Covid will affect international supply chains and economic growth in China in the future. “The country has sort of closed itself off. In part, you don’t know what’s going on there locally. You can’t just fly to China and see what’s going on,” Schmerer says. For a German company that maintains economic relations with China, it’s like flying blind. “It’s a kind of loss of control,” he says. So Schmerer and his colleagues also study the impact on the German labor market. Schmerer hopes the country will soon fully reopen. And even if the growth rate is currently well below six percent – there is still huge potential in China, says Schmerer. Especially in the less developed provinces. What can we learn from the Chinese? “Serenity. No matter what happens. There’s always a path opening up somewhere.” Tim Winter
In Hong Kong, the Museum of Coastal Defense will reopen after renovation work. This life-size model of a pilot with ammunition at the ready can be seen there. The Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defense is located in a former coastal defense fort overlooking the Lei Yue Mun Channel on Hong Kong Island. The fort was built by the British in 1887 to defend the eastern approaches to Victoria Harbour.
The images from the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou resemble revolutionary or civil war scenes: faces covered in blood, torn-down barriers, clouds of tear gas and water cannons sweeping people off the streets. Both at night and during the day yesterday, turbulent scenes erupted around the Apple supplier’s largest plant, which, with its 200,000 or so employees, feels like a city within a city. Inadequate supplies and poor pay have enraged the workforce. Since October, the gigantic plant has been operating in a “closed circuit” due to Covid outbreaks, which means no one can get out.
Despite censorship, the images of the riots now make the rounds in China as well. And they fuel discussions about what price the country should still pay for the strict Covid measures. More and more people realize how confusing the situation is in parts of the country and how quickly the mood can tip, our team reports from Beijing.
The price Germany is willing to pay for its dependence on China is currently being debated in the drafting of Germany’s China strategy. Friction is inevitable. As a Green politician, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock wants to focus on human rights, while the Chancellor’s Office under Olaf Scholz defends the interests of business – at least that is the common narrative. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk has taken a closer look at the two positions based on the sources currently available. His conclusion: The draft from the Foreign Office actually reflects the main ideas of the Chancellor’s Office. But there are also decisive differences. And: In the end, the chancellor has the last word.
Disturbing protest images from Zhengzhou flooded the social media on Wednesday morning. Once again, the focus is on the mega-plant of Apple supplier Foxconn. What can be seen are chaotic scenes in which hundreds of workers initially fight security forces in the darkness of the night on the factory grounds. There is shouting. Tear gas is sprayed. “Defend our rights!” the workers shout.
Later, at dawn, hundreds of employees march down a street outside the plant. Police officers in white Covid security suits seem to retreat at first. But then the two groups clash. Equipped with batons and protective plastic shields, the security forces crackdown on the protesters.
The massive protests present a problem for both Apple and the Chinese government. The situation becomes increasingly dicey for the US company. A few weeks ago, Apple already announced shipping problems for the new iPhone 14 due to the unstable situation at the factory. The warning came after thousands of employees fled the plant to escape the strict Covid measures. Parts of the workforce complained about a poor supply situation, others feared an infection with the virus (China.Table reported).
Foxconn promised to improve the situation and gave workers who wanted to return to the plant higher wages and bonus payments. In the meantime, Foxconn assured that the situation was under control. But that is no longer the case. The protests on Wednesday apparently started because new employees were not satisfied with their pay. There were also rumors that workers were accommodated together with infected co-workers. The plant continues to operate in a “closed circuit,” which means that employees are not allowed to leave the premises.
On Wednesday, Foxconn stated that there was no truth to the rumors. “Regarding violent behaviors, the company will continue to communicate with employees and the government to prevent similar incidents from happening again.”
China’s leadership is now confronted with the second major workers’ protest within a week, with images spreading rapidly on the web. Last Tuesday, for example, angry migrant workers tore down numerous barricades in the southern Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou. The censorship algorithms of Weibo and other social networks responded quickly, as usual. Still, the images made the rounds and triggered incomprehension among many Chinese. More and more people are realizing how increasingly unclear the situation is in parts of the country.
A quick way out of the Covid chaos is not in sight. On Wednesday, the Beijing health authority reported around 29,000 new infections nationwide. By international standards, this number may seem low. But for China, it is close to the highest infection figures of the year, which also means that restrictions are being stepped up day by day.
“China currently sees a record level of lockdowns,” Ting Lu, chief economist at Japanese investment firm Nomura, told the Financial Times. Because so many cities have imposed partial lockdowns, the situation is even slightly worse than in the spring, when the economic hub of Shanghai was locked down for two months. According to Nomura, areas responsible for around 20 percent of China’s economic output are currently affected by restrictions.
Each major city imposed different measures: Beijing urged people in the most populous district of Chaoyang to stay in their homes. Schools, kindergartens and stores are closed. In Guangzhou, several districts are completely under lockdown. Meanwhile, Shanghai announced that travelers coming to the city will not be allowed into restaurants or stores for five days. The mega-metropolis of Chongqing will only allow people to leave in urgent cases and with a negative Covid test.
It seems almost forgotten that the authorities announced a slight relaxation of the measures only two weeks ago. All indications are that infections and restrictions will continue to increase for the time being. Joern Petring
In political Berlin, the impending conflict is already treated as a fact, and the clash of titans is considered inevitable: Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s draft China strategy against the objections of the Chancellor’s Office under Olaf Scholz. While Baerbock as a Green politician puts a focus on human rights and political independence, Scholz as a social democratic chancellor will defend the interests of the economy. This is the common narrative. This was already indicated by the Cosco deal against the will of the Green coalition partners (China.Table reported).
Indeed, political strife within the German government coalition is foreseeable – if only because the three parties want to set themselves apart from each other in the public eye, not least the four liberal FPD ministries. But how far apart are their positions anyway?
In the end, Olaf Scholz has the final say. The chancellor sets the policy guidelines in Germany, and a foreign policy strategy falls within his purview. The best source for the mindset circulating in the chancellor’s office on China is currently Scholz’s guest article in the German daily FAZ before his trip to Beijing (China.Table reported).
Both Baerbock’s draft and the chancellor’s guest article have a lot in common in their assessment of the current situation and their conclusions. The guest article is much shorter, but virtually all of the points raised in it are echoed in the paper by the Foreign Office. In some cases, officials from the two houses even chose the same words.
Both papers agree: China has changed and pursues its interests. At the same time, and here too the text runs parallel, Germany does not want to see an irreconcilable division of the world. “Our goal is not a new bloc confrontation,” Baerbock’s draft reads. “Germany in particular, which experienced the division in the Cold War in a particularly painful way, has no interest in a new bloc formation in the world,” Scholz said.
The overarching concept of both papers is also the same: The same conditions should apply to both sides. “Reduce asymmetries, apply reciprocity,” Baerbock’s people call it. “We are far, too far away from reciprocity, from mutuality in relations between China and Germany,” Scholz laments. The areas to which this is linked are also similar, with market access for companies at the top of the list.
There is great agreement that Germany’s China policy only works as a part of the EU; here, too, there are very similar sentences in both documents. At the same time, both texts emphasize the need to turn to new partners and build international networks. Scholz: “What is true in Europe with regard to Ukraine is also true in Asia, Africa or Latin America. It is here that new centres of power in a multipolar world are emerging, and we aim to establish and expand partnerships with them.” According to the German Foreign Office (AA), “Systemic competition is taking place in Europe’s neighborhood as well as in Africa, Latin America and, of course, the Indo-Pacific.”
Down to the wording, the concern about rapid armament and about Taiwan’s security is also mutual. However, both papers fail to provide a concrete answer as to what should happen in the event of an attack on the island state.
All the more interesting are the few notable differences. Scholz explicitly writes: “We do not want decoupling.” Such a commitment is absent from the Foreign Office draft. The chancellor’s decoupling statement was often quoted in China and interpreted as evidence that Scholz supported Chinese trade interests. Baerbock apparently does not want to leave any room for misunderstanding here.
However, both texts agree that a sudden or even complete breakaway is out of the question. The Chancellor’s Office puts it this way: “Even in changed circumstances, China remains an important business and trading partner for Germany and Europe.” The Foreign Office: “Economic relations are an important dimension of our bilateral exchange with China. For many German and European companies, a presence in the Chinese market is of great importance for their global competitiveness and innovative capacity.”
The Foreign Office and the Chancellor’s Office again absolutely agree, right down to the wording, that risky dependencies must be reduced, especially in the case of raw materials, intermediate products and electronics supplies. Both houses urge to reduce China risks – with Baerbock clearly pointing out that it is in the economy’s own interest to do so.
Back then, in the early 2000s, the greatest adventures could be experienced on China’s railways. Hans-Joerg Schmerer still has fond memories of those times. He was on a backpacking trip with a friend – six weeks, from Beijing to Inner Mongolia. And with every kilometer the two of them traveled, Schmerer ventured deeper into a world that had been unknown to him until then.
It was often difficult to get a train ticket at all. Everything was hopelessly overbooked. Often, the only way was to turn to the black market. And even when the train cars were full: Schmerer enjoyed interacting with the people. He communicated with hand and foot and with the Chinese language skills he had previously acquired through self-study. He mused about China’s economy, traditions and the Chinese way of life – an exciting, carefree time that left a lasting impression on him.
When he returned from his backpacking trip, he decided to study the country even further. He studied economics and sinology. A short time later, he went to Nanjing for a year abroad. An experience that has influenced his path to this day. Not least because this is where he met his wife.
Today, Hans-Joerg Schmerer is 42 years old and Professor of International Economics at the Department of Economics at the Fernuniversität in Hagen. His main focus is on the Chinese economy and its interdependencies with other countries. Schmerer is particularly interested in the big levers of the global economy: How can markets cooperate efficiently in a globalized world? What will the labor markets of the future have to achieve?
A key research topic for the economics professor is currently the question of how zero-Covid will affect international supply chains and economic growth in China in the future. “The country has sort of closed itself off. In part, you don’t know what’s going on there locally. You can’t just fly to China and see what’s going on,” Schmerer says. For a German company that maintains economic relations with China, it’s like flying blind. “It’s a kind of loss of control,” he says. So Schmerer and his colleagues also study the impact on the German labor market. Schmerer hopes the country will soon fully reopen. And even if the growth rate is currently well below six percent – there is still huge potential in China, says Schmerer. Especially in the less developed provinces. What can we learn from the Chinese? “Serenity. No matter what happens. There’s always a path opening up somewhere.” Tim Winter
In Hong Kong, the Museum of Coastal Defense will reopen after renovation work. This life-size model of a pilot with ammunition at the ready can be seen there. The Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defense is located in a former coastal defense fort overlooking the Lei Yue Mun Channel on Hong Kong Island. The fort was built by the British in 1887 to defend the eastern approaches to Victoria Harbour.
