In the latest incident involving government surveillance of mainland China’s private sector, Chinese authorities have detained four employees of Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturer of Apple’s iPhones, according to Taiwan.
Police in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou have charged each of the four Taiwanese workers with crimes amounting to Taiwan’s “criminal breach of trust,” according to a Thursday statement from the Taiwan Mainland Affairs Commission.
The council said Foxconn had stated that “the company did not incur any losses and the four employees did not harm the company’s profits.” A Taiwanese government statement added that the detentions may be the result of “corruption and abuse of power” by law enforcement officials. It’s unclear what kind of work the Foxconn employees were doing.
Foxconn is one of the world’s largest consumer electronics manufacturers and plays a central role in making iPhones and other products for Apple.
Foxconn had no immediate comment Friday.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning was asked about the detention at a regular press conference on Friday. “I do not know the details of the question, and it is not a question related to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” he said.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Commission declined to provide details about when and where the detentions took place. All four Foxconn employees were detained in Zhengzhou, 400 miles southwest of Beijing, in January, according to some Taiwanese news media reports. Other reports said two of the employees were detained in Zhengzhou in January and two in Shenzhen in southern China in April.
A woman who answered the phone at Zhengzhou police declined to provide her phone number, saying she had no personal knowledge of the case but that any questions should be answered by police media personnel.
According to Luo Wenjia, executive director of the Straits Exchange Foundation, a semi-official and private organization in Taiwan that is in charge of relations with the mainland, there have been 77 cases of missing Taiwanese nationals in mainland China since January. Many of these cases are related to suspected fraud. China. He warned Taiwanese against being lured to the mainland to participate in illegal schemes.
Foreign and domestic companies in mainland China are increasingly facing fines and tax audits. Chinese state media reported in October 2023 that Foxconn was subject to tax audits in four provinces, including Henan province, of which Zhengzhou is the capital.
Local governments across China are cash-strapped and struggling to maintain public services. One of their main sources of funding, often the sale of state-owned land to developers, has dried up due to the housing market crash.
Many multinational and Taiwanese companies rely on large numbers of Taiwanese nationals to operate their businesses in mainland China. However, Taiwan’s government and lawmakers have issued a series of warnings about traveling to the mainland.
megan tobin Contributed to the report.
