What started out as a standoff between more than 1,000 Foxconn workers and security staff in the southern Chinese city of Chengdu on Monday night soon escalated into a riot that left many injured and a few dozen arrested.
Hong Kong media, which is known for deviating from the censorship requirements put forth by China’s communist regime, reported that workers felt that their employee apartments were poorly managed and that they were underpaid by the Taiwanese electronics manufacturing company that manufactures Apple Inc.’s iPad and iPhone, Kindle, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.
Foxconn pays its workers approximately $1.50 per hour with some working up to 76 hours per week, sometimes 11 days straight.
Despite the incident being widely reported, local police dismissed the happening of the riot.
“On the evening of June 4, seven Chengdu Foxconn employees, including one named Yang Fan, were dining at a nearby restaurant,” the Chengdu Gaoxin district police Thursday said on their Weibo page, a Twitter-like service that came into being in China following the ban of the microblogging site in 2009.
“Because they were drunk and annoyed by a quarrel between the couple who owned the restaurant, they smashed properties at the restaurant and got into an argument with the owners. Once a witness called the police, the seven employees ran back to their apartment complex calling out ‘we are being beaten!’ which provoked about 100 other employees to throw things around.”
The two drastically different accounts have brought much confusion to the Chinese public. Shanghai-based news magazine Social Outlook posted, “Should we believe in the police or the TV? We are concerned about the incident, but these two reports are nothing but conflicting. … If we believe in the police, then does that mean the television stations are lying, and if we believe in the television stations, does that mean the police is [are] lying?”
Meanwhile, many other Weibo users said that they are very used to the state denying every report on dissatisfaction and riots, and the state-controlled police are no exception.
“Every word from the state would lead to the public to doubt! Every incident that the public doubts would induce the state to dismiss! Every incident that the state dismisses would in the end turn out to be true!” Weibo user angry_cola posted on Thursday evening.
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