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iShenzhen, China. Dressed in white, the traditional color of mourning in China, the father of 19-year-old Ma Xiangqian wept outside the gates of a sprawling electronics complex. His wife and daughter knelt alongside.

Ma is one of nine workers who have died in apparent suicides at tightly guarded factory complexes this year, raising questions about the harsher aspects of blue-collar life around southern China’s Pearl River Delta, dubbed the workshop of the world.

The parents say Ma died under mysterious circumstances. They want to know why. “All we want to know is the truth. We don’t even want compensation,” the father said.

The factory in Shenzhen’s Longhua subdistrict belongs to Hon Hai Precision Industry, a Taiwanese giant that is contracted to make electronics for Apple and most major personal-computer brands.

Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou, one of Taiwan’s best-known businessmen, on Wednesday led a rare tour for the news media around the Chinese plant, part of an unprecedented publicity blitz to counter a growing backlash over the suicides.

“You can see we have these facilities for workers who want to relax,” Gou said, standing by an Olympic-size swimming pool in the vast Longhua complex, which has tree-lined avenues, post offices, banks and bakeries catering to many of about 400,000 workers it employs in southern China.

“This is not a place that treats its workers badly,” Gou said.

The stakes are high for Hon Hai and its Foxconn unit that makes mobile phones for the world’s top brands, amid growing calls from activists for a global boycott of such products as Apple’s latest-generation iPhone.

Hon Hai’s client list reads like a Who’s Who of electronics makers — from Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Dell, to the world’s top mobile-phone maker Nokia.

“It’s a crucial issue that Hon Hai has to deal with right away,” said Andrew Deng, an analyst with Taiwan International Securities. “If not, Nokia, HP and Apple might cut their orders, as pressure against buying their products could be mounting.”

Hon Hai and Foxconn have come under fire for their harsh and secretive corporate culture.

Apple said on Wednesday that it was “saddened and upset by the recent suicides at Foxconn.” It added that its own investigating team was carrying out independent evaluations of what Foxconn was doing to “address these tragic events.”

In a separate statement, Dell said: “Foxconn is contract manufacturer for Dell. Any reports of poor working conditions in Dell’s supply chain are investigated and, if warranted, appropriate action is taken.”



Reuters