China wants retired military personnel to help boost production at the world’s largest iPhone factory in Zhengzhou.
The call came from a People’s Liberation Army veterans office in the same province as the factory.
A local Covid outbreak has hit production at the Foxconn factory.
In an open letter posted on messaging app WeChat, the office said the veterans were still under Communist Party command and should “show up where there is a need.”
It urged them to “answer the government’s call” and “take part in the resumption of production”.
Foxconn, headquartered in Taiwan, has many factories in China.
The factory in Zhengzhou, a city of about 10 million people, employs more than 200,000 people and produces 70% of the world’s iPhones, or about 500,000 daily.
The Chinese wave of Covid earlier this year forced the temporary closure of a few Foxconn factories.
To maintain production, the Zhengzhou factory has been under a “Covid bubble” since 2022.
Any staff who test positive are sent to quarantine centres within the factory, but that hasn’t stopped workers from getting infected.
A few cases were discovered inside the factory in October – at the same time, the city of Zhengzhou announced a lockdown in some neighbourhoods. The actual number of Foxconn infections has not been released.
The epidemic triggered panic inside the factory. Videos shared on social media showed many workers jumping fences outside the factory in an attempt to flee.
Many Foxconn employees traveled miles along a road because no public transport was available.