Foxconn, a subsidiary of Taiwanese electronics giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, is in the spotlight this week for all the wrong reasons after a spate of suicides this year at one of its manufacturing plants in Shenzhen, China.
The deaths of 10 workers at the plant, with another death reported at a Foxconn plant in Hebei Province, has brought the company so much unwanted attention that the normally shy Hon Hai chairman, Terry Gou (郭台銘), was forced into conducting a press tour of the huge plant on Wednesday in a bid to rebut accusations of labor-camp-style employment conditions for the plant’s 250,000 workers.
In fitting with the plant’s location in China, the tour apparently resembled a communist-style organized propaganda tour, with workers lining up to tell the visiting reporters that life inside the walled complex was not as bad as media reports had made out and that the deaths were probably the result of personal problems.
Outside of the site, however, several workers gave another side of the story, backing up the claims of labor groups that working conditions and pay are far from ideal.
Embarrassingly for Gou, another worker jumped to his death just hours after the tycoon had assured the throngs of reporters that the company was doing all it could to prevent any further tragedies.
Being on the defensive is a whole new experience for someone like Gou, who back home in Taiwan is attributed almost godlike status thanks to the success of his electronics manufacturing empire.
For years, industrialists like Gou and before him Formosa Plastics founder Wang Yung-ching (王永慶) — both successful products of Taiwan’s economic miracle — have been blindly revered by the media and the majority of the population for their success, their business acumen and their management skills, but above all for the enormous amounts of wealth they have accumulated.
Little attention was ever paid to the side effects of such phenomenal wealth creation, such as the workhouse labor conditions suffered by employees, the damage to the health of workers and nearby residents that dangerous substances can cause, the environmental legacy being created by the millions of tonnes of carbon emissions pumped into the atmosphere each year and the destruction of flora and fauna.
That is gradually changing, with more attention being brought to the environmental and social costs of the consumer society we live in.
Formosa Plastics Corp was recently in the news after being handed the “Black Planet” award by a German-based environmental group for its environmental record. Thanks to the efforts of civic groups, more and more people are becoming aware of the threat rampant industrialization poses to the habitat of endangered creatures such as the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin.
Now the Foxconn case has bought attention to the plight of the millions of Chinese migrant workers who endure life away from family and home while working very long shifts for low pay.
While the coverage may not be enough to stop the pollution, the habitat destruction or any further suicides, it is most welcome all the same.
The sooner people realize that people like Gou and Wang are just businessmen and not gods and start realizing the real cost of the everyday items and gadgets they manufacture, the better.
A series of strong earthquakes in Hualien County not only caused severe damage in Taiwan, but also revealed that China’s power has permeated everywhere. A Taiwanese woman posted on the Internet that she found clips of the earthquake — which were recorded by the security camera in her home — on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. It is spine-chilling that the problem might be because the security camera was manufactured in China. China has widely collected information, infringed upon public privacy and raised information security threats through various social media platforms, as well as telecommunication and security equipment. Several former TikTok employees revealed
For the incoming Administration of President-elect William Lai (賴清德), successfully deterring a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attack or invasion of democratic Taiwan over his four-year term would be a clear victory. But it could also be a curse, because during those four years the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will grow far stronger. As such, increased vigilance in Washington and Taipei will be needed to ensure that already multiplying CCP threat trends don’t overwhelm Taiwan, the United States, and their democratic allies. One CCP attempt to overwhelm was announced on April 19, 2024, namely that the PLA had erred in combining major missions
The Constitutional Court on Tuesday last week held a debate over the constitutionality of the death penalty. The issue of the retention or abolition of the death penalty often involves the conceptual aspects of social values and even religious philosophies. As it is written in The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, the government’s policy is often a choice between the lesser of two evils or the greater of two goods, and it is impossible to be perfect. Today’s controversy over the retention or abolition of the death penalty can be viewed in the same way. UNACCEPTABLE Viewing the
At the same time as more than 30 military aircraft were detected near Taiwan — one of the highest daily incursions this year — with some flying as close as 37 nautical miles (69kms) from the northern city of Keelung, China announced a limited and selected relaxation of restrictions on Taiwanese agricultural exports and tourism, upon receiving a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation led by KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁). This demonstrates the two-faced gimmick of China’s “united front” strategy. Despite the strongest earthquake to hit the nation in 25 years striking Hualien on April 3, which caused