In Zhengzhou, an employee was reportedly arrested on suspicion of breach of trust.
Taipei, Taiwan – Taiwan’s state news agency reported that four Taiwanese employees of Apple supplier Foxconn have been detained in China since January.
Workers in the city of Zhengzhou, home to Foxconn’s largest iPhone factory, were detained by the local public security bureau on charges amounting to “breach of trust,” Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Thursday, citing the Taiwanese government.
According to CNA, the Taiwan Mainland Affairs Commission (MAC) cited a Foxconn statement saying that its employees had not done anything to harm the company’s interests and that there was a possibility of corruption or abuse of power by a small number of police officers. He also said that gender cannot be excluded.
MAC told Reuters and AFP that the incident was “extremely bizarre” and “severely undermined the company’s credibility.”
Foxconn and MAC did not respond to requests for comment.
The incident is the latest to draw attention to the risks faced by Taiwanese nationals living and working in China.
Last month, in the first prosecution of its kind, a Wenzhou court sentenced Taiwanese independence activist Yang Chi-yuan to nine years in prison for secession.
Also last month, CNA reported that an executive from Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics was detained while attempting to leave China.
In June, MAC raised its travel alert for China, Hong Kong and Macau from “yellow” to “orange”, citing China’s strict national security and anti-espionage laws, and told citizens not to make “unnecessary travel”. He recommended that.
In July, Taiwan’s National Security Bureau announced to Taiwan’s legislature that 15 nationals had been detained or tried on Chinese territory in the past 12 months, and 51 were interrogated at the border.
The Beijing Communist Party claims autonomous Taiwan (officially the Republic of China) as a province, but claims Taipei is a sovereign democracy.
The Chinese government also does not recognize dual nationality and considers Taiwanese to be Chinese citizens.
Hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese lived and worked in China in the 1990s and 2000s, but their numbers have declined sharply since the China-skeptic Democratic Progressive Party came to power in 2016, and relations between China and Taiwan have declined. The deterioration has become remarkable.
