Protesting Workers Beaten at Chinese IPhone Factory

Foxconn offered up to 10,000 yuan ($1,400) to newly hired employees who wanted to quit and return home, the finance news outlet Cailianshe reported, citing unidentified recruiting agents.

Foxconn didn't respond to a request for confirmation or details.

Protests have flared as the number and severity of outbreaks has risen across China, prompting areas including Beijing, the capital, to close neighborhoods and impose other restrictions residents say go beyond what the national government allows.

More than 253,000 cases have been found in the past three weeks and the daily average is increasing, the government reported Tuesday. This week, authorities reported China’s first COVID-19 deaths in six months.

The government will enforce its anti-COVID policy while “resolutely overcoming the mindset of paralysis and laxity,” said a spokesman for the National Health Commission, Mi Feng.

Early Thursday, the government reported a total of 31,656 cases found over the past 24 hours, including 27,646 without symptoms and 212 infections it said were acquired abroad. The total was up about 10% from the previous day.

Also Thursday, people in eight districts of Zhengzhou with a total of 6.6 million residents were told to stay home for five days, going out only to buy food or for medical treatment. Daily mass testing was ordered in what the city government called a “war of annihilation” against the virus.

The city government of Guangzhou, the site of the biggest outbreaks, announced Wednesday it opened 19 temporary hospitals with a total of almost 70,000 beds for coronavirus patients. The city announced plans last week to build hospital and quarantine facilities for 250,000 people.

Also Wednesday, Beijing opened a hospital in an exhibition center and suspended access to Beijing International Studies University after a virus case was found there. The capital earlier closed shopping malls and office buildings and suspended access to some apartment compounds.

I saw this floating around on a different site, really horrible stuff, we need to pull more stuff out of China until they improve their working conditions.