Over the weekend, a riot broke out at Foxconn's Taiyuan plant, reportedly over guards beating up a worker. Initial reports via social media said 2,000 people were rioting at a factory after a guard hit a worker.
However by the time Western news agencies began reporting the story, Foxconn had sanitized what happened. The corporation said the riot was a "personal dispute in a dormitory that erupted into a mass brawl." China state media said 5,000 police officers were deployed to suppress the riot and the factory remains closed today while the "disturbance" is investigated.
"The cause of this dispute is under investigation by local authorities and we are working closely with them in this process, but it appears not to have been work-related," Foxconn said. Hon Hai said about 2,000 workers were involved.
Comments posted online, however, suggested security guards may have been to blame. In a posting on the Chinese Twitter-like microblog site Sina Weibo, user "Jo-Liang" said that four or five security guards beat a worker almost to death.
Once the investigation is complete, my guess is the ultimate cause of the riots will be overly zealous job seekers looking for work, because that's the perspective on Chinese labor conditions Mitt Romney made:
When I was back in my private equity days, we went to China to buy a factory there...
Around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire and guard towers. And, and, we said gosh! I can't believe that you, you know, keep these girls in! They said, no, no, no. This is to keep other people from coming in.
Romney believes the line his Chinese handlers gave him. In Romney's world, the cause of the riot will be people job hunting or a culture clash between workers.
In America, we're being told we will lose our jobs if we cannot compete with Chinese workers living in factory barracks surrounded by barbed wire. After all in Romney's 1% world, labor costs are cheaper in China and cheaper labor means bigger corporate profits. All those guards in towers watching workers surrounded by barbed wire are really just for employee safety. If they were unhappy with the conditions, millions of other Chinese applicants will be happy to take their place.
This week is China-week for the Romney campaign. Romney claims in a new ad that the president has not "stood up to China" , but as President Obama said last week:
His experience has been owning companies that were called "pioneers" in the business of outsourcing jobs to countries like China. He made money investing in companies that uprooted from here and went to China... You can’t stand up to China when all you’ve done is send them our jobs.
Romney believes what his Chinese handlers tell him about barbed wire fences and guard towers. Gosh.