On any normal morning, thousands of workers stream in and out of the huge gates of Foxconn Zhengzhou Science Park, a 1.4m ompound in the central Chinese province of Henan. But on Tuesday, there was only one man at the gates: a customs official standing guard. As Chinese authorities scramble to contain an outbreak of novel coronavirus, factories have been ordered to remain shut until Monday following last week’s lunar new year holiday, this heart of the global technology supply chain has stopped beating.
The customs inspectors normally make it easy for Apple to quickly export the smartphones made here – the world’s largest iPhone factory – each day. But the official did not know when work at the plant would resume. With its heavy reliance on production networks in China and outsourcing geared towards just-in-time shipments, the technology industry is among the hardest-hit by the disruption of normal economic life.
“Since the top provinces in terms of infections include Zhejiang, Guangdong and Henan, which are so important for tech manufacturing, there obviously is a big problem,” said Don Yew, an analyst at Morningstar in Singapore. “This episode is going to make it even clearer to Apple that there is overconcentration in China and they may,vant to address that.”