The picture shows a Chinese dissident being rescued from a Singapore immigration detention center and arriving in Ontario, Canada, on October 11, 2024. (Fu Yifeng's Twitter)
[People News] During the COVID lockdowns of 2022, a mass exodus of Foxconn workers broke out in Zhengzhou, Henan, shocking the world. Chinese dissidents have accused authorities, claiming that a relative witnessed "corpses" of employees being discarded in trash dumps while working at Foxconn, prompting them to join the escape.
In October this year, Chinese dissident Fu Yifeng was rescued from Southeast Asia to Canada. In a recent interview with NTDTV, he described how the CCP completely disregards human life. Due to the lockdown measures at the time, the entire Foxconn factory had fallen into extreme chaos. Medical supplies were scarce, and the entire area had descended into a state of disorder, generally divided into phases:
At the beginning of the outbreak, some medical resources were available, and the humanitarian crisis had not yet reached catastrophic proportions. However, during the middle phase, medical resources became severely limited, and the lockdowns were overly strict, causing workers to flee. Fu’s relative fled during this period. Later, Foxconn hired a new batch of workers, and violent conflicts erupted between Foxconn workers and police in the final phase.
Relevant videos circulated on social media at the time, showing employees scaling the barbed-wire fences surrounding the Foxconn industrial park at the end of October. Some workers, carrying their luggage, walked along highways and rested briefly in overgrown fields. Some clashed with CCP police attempting to stop them on the highways; a few fortunate ones managed to hitch rides home on trucks, though some truck drivers were reportedly quarantined afterward for helping them.
According to a 2022 Twitter post by BBC Beijing correspondent Stephen McDonell, some Foxconn workers secretly walked over 100 kilometers back to their hometowns. Parts of Zhengzhou implemented new lockdowns, restricting everyone to their homes and only allowing cars on the road once a week.
McDonell noted that if the "Zero-COVID policy" continued in China, more chaotic incidents were bound to happen. The public’s lack of knowledge about the COVID virus was alarmingly high, for which the government bore significant responsibility. The fear, panic, rumors, paranoia, and ignorance resulting from the Zero-COVID policy ultimately led to the Foxconn incident...
On October 30, 2022, Japanese senior journalist Akio Yaita posted on Facebook that after around two weeks of outbreak, the Zhengzhou government locked down the factory area, trapping "tens of thousands of employees in their dormitories, where they lacked space for movement, faced severe shortages of food and drinking water, and only received a mask every three days. Those who fell ill could not get medical treatment. After enduring it for more than ten days, some workers finally broke through the security blockade and staged a mass exodus." These fleeing scenes "resembled the mass exodus during the Henan famine of 1942."
*China News Weekly* also reported an article titled *Before and After the Foxconn Employee "Walk Home"* acknowledging that the Zhengzhou Foxconn Airport Industrial Park once employed over 300,000 workers, though that number had dropped to around 200,000, meaning about 100,000 workers had left. Many workers were reluctant to leave due to economic pressure.
In the early morning of October 30, 2022, Su Dongxia, the Party Committee Secretary of the Zhengzhou Foxconn Technology Park, posted on her WeChat Moments, stating: "With over 200,000 people at the Zhengzhou Foxconn factory, it is destined to be more than just a company—it is a complex society with significant management challenges. After the outbreak, Foxconn tried its best to mobilize internal resources to handle the situation, though external support was minimal... It was eventually forced to let employees go home." However, she later claimed that this content was a repost and not her original statement.
The general belief is that the severe epidemic and chaotic management led to the workers’ mass exodus. But just how chaotic was the real situation?
**Employee "Corpses" Dumped in Trash, Triggering the Exodus**
"The reality was far more serious than what was revealed online," Fu Yifeng said. "When employees developed high fevers, there was no treatment, and no medical personnel were sent. Some people fell into a stupor with blurred vision, unable to stand. They would be placed into trash bags and thrown into the garbage dump."
Fu continued, "They [relatives] sent me videos showing a garbage area behind the dormitory where they piled up human bodies. We don’t know the exact number. I don’t dare say it was everywhere, but we saw at least a dozen bodies, maybe more."
"People were so feverish that they became delirious. When they were placed in trash bags, they felt uncomfortable, twisting and turning. Some people would even roll out of the garbage piles. We felt it was terrifying; it was like people weren’t even treated as humans, like life was treated as worthless. It was mainly a sense of oppression."
"They knew this was real," Fu said. At that time, his relative was still working but, after his shift, left everything behind and joined the crowd in a mass exodus, walking along highways for five or six days. Everyone was trying to get home by walking along national highways.
Fu recalled, "Those piled-up things were actually people. Later, they posted it in their work chat groups, saying, 'These are human corpses!' After that, we decided this was no place to stay. If this situation continued, it would be disastrous. Everyone was running away. My relative finished his shift, grabbed his bag, left, and didn’t even care about his salary."
"After he got home, he never returned, fearing the Communist Party might retaliate later. They might even punish him for things he did in the past. This is a common CCP tactic."
Foxconn has consistently denied that severe infections occurred at the Zhengzhou park. Research shows that most videos and comments about the Foxconn worker protests and exodus have been removed from Chinese media.
Foreign media sources still contain videos showing people in protective suits gathered in the dark at the Foxconn campus, including a woman sitting on the ground crying, reportedly shouting, "Room 726, they’re all dead! It’s so tragic!" The lights in the dormitory area flashed, with workers shouting and whistling.
On November 5, 2022, a video circulated showing a woman with a Henan accent climbing onto an air conditioner unit outside a building window, loudly demanding a COVID test, threatening to "make a big scene" if she wasn’t tested. She cried out, "Foxconn employees, corpses were thrown away, treated as garbage!"
Another video showed workers in trash piles being dragged away by people in protective suits, with unknown fates, while another trash bag contained visible movement inside, creating a horrific scene.
One netizen commented, "They were most likely starved to death. I’ve had COVID, and it doesn’t kill. The only explanation for their death is human-caused disaster. In China, what’s strange about this? During the Cultural Revolution, I saw teachers beaten to death by students and left by trash piles."
Fu Yifeng explained that since his birth in China, he has never been able to obtain household registration. "I don’t have an ID card, so I can’t go anywhere. During the pandemic, I traveled from city to city on my motorcycle, looking for work." While crossing city or provincial borders, he frequently encountered checkpoints and toll stations where he faced constant harassment.
"They’d tell me to show my ID. No ID? How could you not have an ID? Then they’d call the police to detain me, forcibly do COVID testing. Without an ID, how could I get tested? Without testing, they’d just hold me."
Fu expressed, "This is happening around us. That disaster was endless..."
*(Epoch Times reporters Yi Ru and Li Yuanming contributed to this report)*
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