The Chinese Communist Party’s public security bureau detained four Taiwanese executives working at Foxconn under the pretext of “non-public bribery”, preventing them from returning to Taiwan until now. Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council stated that the case is quite unusual and may be the result of a few corrupt and abusive public security officers.
According to a statement from Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council on Wednesday (October 8th), these four executives were detained in Zhengzhou on suspicion of “non-public bribery”. Zhengzhou is where Foxconn, the flagship company of Hon Hai Technology Group, operates the world’s largest iPhone assembly plant.
The Mainland Affairs Council referenced Hon Hai’s statement, indicating that these employees did not harm the company’s interests, and the company did not report any cases to the Chinese Communist Party’s public security, deeming the accusations against them as odd. The Council pointed out in the statement that this incident may be the result of some local public security officers abusing their power, severely damaging corporate confidence, and urged the CCP to investigate and handle the situation promptly.
Previous reports suggested that Chinese employees at Foxconn revealed to the families of the Taiwanese executives that the entire incident was a setup orchestrated by locals colluding with the Chinese public security to frame them and profit from it.
According to Bloomberg, it is currently unclear what led to their arrest. The Foxconn Zhengzhou plant is known as the largest iPhone assembly base in the world, often referred to as “iPhone City”. The plant employs hundreds of thousands of people.
Taiwanese media reported that earlier this year, the four Hon Hai employees were taken away by local public security in Zhengzhou on charges of “non-public bribery”, with two of them being accused of embezzling funds due to a lack of evidence of bribery transactions.
In recent years, foreign executives in China have been successively detained by the Chinese authorities, raising concerns about the safety of multinational corporation employees. An executive at the Japanese pharmaceutical company Astellas Pharma Inc. was charged with espionage in August, while Australian journalist Cheng Lei was released last year after being detained for over three years.
Before the Astellas Pharma executive was charged, Beijing fined the American corporate investigation firm Mintz Group approximately $1.5 million for illegally collecting data. A few months ago, Chinese officials raided the company’s office and detained five Chinese employees.
Similar incidents occurred in 2023. The American consulting firm Bain & Co. stated that Chinese authorities had inquired about their Shanghai office employees; the Chinese Ministry of State Security publicly raided the New York and Shanghai-based consulting firm Capvision, accusing the company of aiding foreign espionage activities.
Authorities also detained an executive and two former employees of WPP Group, one of the world’s largest advertising companies.
In June, the Mainland Affairs Council raised the travel warning level to the second-highest for mainland China, advising Taiwanese to avoid unnecessary travel, to prevent illegal detention or interrogation amidst the tightening of national security laws in Beijing.
As the Chinese government continues to suppress foreign enterprises with various justifications and reasons, and with no hope in sight for the Chinese economy, foreign companies are flocking out of China. Top American brands like Apple, Starbucks, and McDonald’s are seeking alternative routes to reduce their dependence on the Chinese market.
The Shanghai government stated in August that one of the most pressing economic challenges now is the “hollowing out” of the supply chain, noting that Apple has shifted some electronic production to countries like India and Vietnam.
(Reference from The Wall Street Journal)