Apple workers at an iPhone plant in China protest amid COVID lockdowns
Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani joins the Live show to discuss how Chinese citizens are reacting to lockdowns.
Video Transcript
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BRIAN SOZZI: But we begin today with our top story. Chaos ensued at the world's biggest Apple iPhone factory in China as tensions boiled over China's tough COVID restrictions and worker pay. Following footage might be disturbing for some viewers, but you're seeing it right there on the screen. The protests started overnight due to unpaid wages and COVID restrictions and several were left injured. This as the country grapples with rising cases and newly implemented restrictions.
Let's bring in Yahoo Finance's senior health care reporter Anjalee Khemlani to break this all down. So Anjalee, the cases are spiking over there. Any indication why this is happening? It seems to have really picked up the past two weeks or so.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: It really has. I mean, we know, of course, the COVID restrictions have been pretty dynamic. They've been pretty piecemeal as we've started to see in the last several weeks with certain locations locking down, event venues locking down, and companies as well. And this specifically, the Apple factory or rather the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou has been a place where there has been a lot of commotion in the past several weeks.
There's been a lot of concern about the way that some of these workers or the environment that they're working in and what's going on. And we know from a statement from the company to Yahoo Finance that on Tuesday evening some of the younger workers, the newer hires did present some requests about being paid and about the conditions in which they were living in dorms saying that they felt that they were in situations where they were living either with COVID positive or previously COVID positive individuals or in environments where there were COVID around and they were concerned about that. The company says that that's not true. Those speculations are false, and that these environments have been cleaned, these dorms have been cleaned, and that the company is working about getting these workers paid.
So that's just really a microscope on a situation that has been taking place across the country for the past several weeks. We've been seeing these spurts of protests or just really some concern from workers or from people in these neighborhoods where they're locked down where they don't have access to food or it's restricted. And that goes back to the pressure that China is facing on its zero-COVID policy.
And maintaining that right now, we've seen the impact of it on people. We also know from reports earlier this year that it's already impacting the economy. So a lot going on and that's just one part of the story.
- What types of cases are we seeing right now in terms of total figures in China? And how does that correlate to even some of the spikes that we typically have seen this time of the year in years past as well when you've got more congregate settings that people are going back into as well?
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: And winter as well, right? So obviously, that means more people spend time indoors. So now they're seeing another wave of these Omicron subvariants, more than 20,000 cases at a time.
And that's really on par with what we're seeing here in the US, so they're not far off. The variants that are affecting them are different than the ones we're seeing here in the US. And that's why this whole COVID picture is so different in this year, in this winter specifically because it's not just one variant that is affecting the whole world in waves. It is now various variants affecting the whole world.
And so right now the BF.7 is the one causing a spike there. Good news is that the death rate hasn't increased as much, but we are seeing a significant increase in cases. And that's something that they haven't seen since April. Meanwhile, over here, we have the one BQ.1, BQ1.1 to worry about, so different stories.
- Different stories. And also different stories because here in the US, we're sort of past the shutdown phase. We're not sort of, we're past the shutdown phase. Whereas, China has tried to contain it.
But China now is having to then stimulate the economy in order to make up for its own self-imposed lockdowns. So there's a report today that the Chinese central bank is considering a cut to the reserve requirement ratio. So basically it's central bank stimulus being added to the economy at the same time that most central banks around the globe are eliminating that kind of stimulus. So we did see China stocks rally on that, but again it sort of demonstrates the challenge that they have there as they're still imposing all of these requirements.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Absolutely. And we already know, like I mentioned, the slowdown in quarter over quarter in the first half of the year. But also youth unemployment has hit an all time high, nearly 20% in the first half of the year by June. And so they're contending with a lot right now. And the impact of this policy trying to maintain basically the idea that they have control over the situation, they're not going to let this become the widespread situation that it's become in the US.
And to be fair, their numbers have been lower based on the reported numbers over time. But what do we know about those numbers still is the question mark. We do know that by comparison, there's a lot going on here in the US, as well. We just haven't necessarily been paying as much attention to it.
- Yahoo Finance's own Anjalee Khemlani. Thanks so much for tracking all of this. Of course, a major situation unfolding in China. We'll continue to keep tabs on things.
